THE  RELATION 

OF  ULTRAMODERN  TO 

ARCHAIC  MUSIC 

KATHERINE  RUTH  HEYMAN 


(LIBRARY") 
UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 
SAN  DIEGO 


THE  RELATION 

OF  ULTRAMODERN  TO 

ARCHAIC  MUSIC 


BY 
KATHERINE   RUTH   HEYMAN 


BOSTON 
SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 

Publishers 


Copyright,  1921 
BY  SMALL,  MAYNARD  £f  COMPANY 


INCORPORATED 


To  the  Spirit  of*Art 

AND  ALL  PURE  CHANNELS  THROUGH  WHOM 
IT  FLOWS;    NAMING  BY  NAME 


PREFACE 

IN  a  Foreword  I  have  always  found  the  gist  of  the 
matter :  what  an  author  fears  he  has  not  made  plain. 
This  series  of  lectures,  the  outcome  of  one  Confer- 
ence compiled  from  stray  notes  for  a  San  Francisco 
club  in  1916,  is  by  virtue  of  scores  of  subsequent 
presentations  so  generally  understandable  that  — 
contrary  to  the  custom  of  writers  —  I  shrink  from 
the  responsibility  that  my  plain  speaking  entails.  It 
is  at  the  request  of  the  publishers  that  these  lectures 
are  given  to  the  larger  audience  known  as  the  public, 
and  my  hope  is  that  to  each  reader  the  book  may 
serve  only  as  a  point  of  departure  for  the  individual 
thought  and  research  still  too  rare  amongst  musi- 
cians in  my  country.  A  Club  will  never  take  the 
place  of  a  library,  nor  will  a  meeting  serve  the  pur- 
pose of  meditation. 

I  acknowledge  with  gratitude  my  obligation  to 
Sasaki  Shigetz,  Takuma  Kuroda,  J.  Landseer  Mac- 
kenzie, Emily  Adams  Goan  and  Sidney  Howard, 
and  to  the  devoted  heart  of  Marie  Planner  in  her 
indispensable  cooperation. 

Here,  too,  I  would  thank  Paul  Dougherty,  the 
painter,  for  the  encouragement  given  me  at  the  out- 
set of  my  researches  when  he  said,f "  But  any  man 
who  sees  anything  at  all,  knows  that  what  he  sees 
is  n't  all  there  is  of  iti"  * 

In  music,  to  find  the  rest  of  it,  one  draws  near  to 
the  Source  of  Life  itself.  '; 

KATHERINE  RUTH  WILLOUGHBY  HEYMAN. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

THE  MODES i 

DEBUSSY 24 

RHYTHM 46 

PARALLELS  BETWEEN  ULTRAMODERN 

POETRY  AND  ULTRAMODERN  Music  .     70 
SCRIABIN  no 


The  Relation  of  Ultramodern 
to  Archaic  Music 


THE  MODES 

LUJRENCE  BINYON,  in  the  "Flight  of  the 
Dragon," *  writes :  "  In  the  dance  the  body 
becomes  a  work  of  art,  a  plastic  ideal,  infinitely  ex- 
pressive of  emotion  and  of  thought;  and  in  every 
art  the  material  taken  up,  just  in  so  far  as  the  artist 
is  successful,  is  merged  into  idea."  Before  this  he 
says,  "The  walls,  the  roof,  the  pillars  of  a  great 
cathedral  are  in  the  mind  of  the  architect  no  mere 
mass  of  stones,  but  so  many  coordinated  energies, 
each  exerting  force  in  relation  to  each  other,  like 
the  tense  limbs  of  a  body  possessed  by  a  single  mood 
of  rapt  exaltation." 

To  merge  stone  into  idea  may  to  the  layman 
seem  something  of  a  task;  but  transmutation  of 
music  into  its  original  substance  is  more  readily 
conceivable.  The  closest  rapport  that  can  be  es- 
tablished between  our  earthly  art  forms  and  the 
supersensuous  verities  is  through  the  concept  of 
relation  and  correspondence.  Relation:  this  to 
that.  Correspondence:2  this  with  that.  Ancient 
music  took  cognizance  of  these  factors  instead  of 

*  Laurence  Binyon,  "  The  Flight  of  the  Dragon,"  an  Essay 
on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Art  in  China  and  Japan.    Pub- 
lished by  John  Murray,  London. 

*  Correspondence  is  a  sort  of  proportion  showing  the  unity 
of  all  things  in  their  original  essence. 


2  THE    RELATION    OF 

attempting  the  mimetic  or  the  descriptive.  If  it 
seems  harder  for  architects  to  build  of  mind-stuff 
because  stiff,  unyielding  matter  is  present  to  their 
senses,  do  the  facts  not  imply  that  to  the  great 
builders,  as  to  the  Buddhists,  matter  was  but  a  sense 
perception  and  a  symbol  ?  Goethe  says, 

Alles  Vergangliche 
1st  nur  ein  Gleichbild.1 

For  cathedrals  are  replete  with  examples  of  super- 
physical  correspondences.  Among  these  may  be 
cited  a  chapel  in  Westminster  Abbey  conceived  with 
reference  to  the  numerical  significance  of  the  word 
petros,  and  Glastonbury  Abbey,  the  oldest  church 
in  England  (vetusta  ecclesia),  of  which  the  chapel 
was  built  according  to  squares  of  888  inches  to 
typify  the  numerical  value  of  the  word  "Jesus." 
Then  if  you  care  to  look  at  a  sketch  of  the  Milan 
Cathedral  reproduced  in  "  The  Canon "  2  you  will 
see  the  beautiful  symmetry  of  this  edifice  above 
and  below  the  ground. 

In  study  and  meditation  on  these  matters  it 
became  clear  to  me  that,  using  the  same  twelve  semi- 
tones as  (relative)  material  out  of  which  all  Occi- 
dental music  has  been  constructed  for  thousands  of 
years,  if  the  ancients  laid  such  great  stress  upon 
different  formulas  of  tones  for  different  occasions, 
and  the  powerful  churches  laid  so  great  stress  upon 
special  music  for  special  occasions,  the  reason  must 
lie  within  the  fundamental  arrangements  of  this 

1  W.  F.  Cobb,  D.D.,  Rector  of  St.  Ethelburga's  in  the  City 
of  London.  "  Mysticism  and  the  Creed,"  preface,  p.  xv. 

1  "  The  Canon."  Anon.  Published  by  Elkin  Matthews, 
London. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     3 

material.  The  difference  is  all  in  the  placement  of 
the  semitone.  It  is  to  show  something  of  these 
various  arrangements  and  their  connotations  that 
these  researches  are  submitted. 

Our  "  major " l  scale  has  held  popular  sway, 
with  his  sad  little  half-caste  wife,  the  "  minor,"  until 
the  Western  world  has  forgotten  all  their  dignified 
and  pious  relatives.  We  have  been  content  with 
semblances  instead  of  verities  during  the  past  two 
hundred  and  fifty  years,  and  the  result  in  the  tech- 
nique of  composition  has  been  continual  revision  of 
rules  made  by  pedants  and  broken  by  artists.  For 
whom  have  these  rules  been  made?  They  are  dis- 
regarded every  time  the  Creative  Spirit  takes  com- 
mand. Is  it  not  time  we  discovered  some  basic 
truth  in  music  on  which  we  can  build  ?  The  church 
is  commonly  said  to  have  retarded  the  development 
of  the  art  of  music:  the  church  forbade  the  use  of 
certain  factors  that  are  now  beginning  to  be  revealed 
as  erroneous,  and  held  to  certain  factors  that  we 
begin  to  see  are  vital.2  Among  these  I  might  refer 
to  the  intervals  of  the  third  and  the  fourth.  The 
fourth  has  sounded  ugly  to  us  for  several  hundred 

1  "  Not  indeed  that  all  musical  systems  are  founded  on  the 
same  elementary  relations.    But  universally  recognized  as  be- 
longing to  this  class  are  the  relations  between  any  sound  and 
its  eighth  above  and  below,  either  being  regarded  as  a  tonic; 
the  relation  between  a  sound  and  its  fourth  above,  the  latter 
being  regarded  as  tonic ;  the  relation  between  a  note  and  its 
fifth  above,  the  former  being  regarded  as  tonic.    But  the  re- 
lation of  the  Major  third  which  plays  such  a  prominent  part 
in  modern  music  has  no  place  as  an  elementary  relation  in  the 
system  of  Ancient  Greece."  —  Maurice  Emmanuel,  "  Histoire 
de  la  Langue  Musicale,  Avertissement,"  p.  vi. 

2  Pierre  Aubry,  "  Trouveres  et  Troubadours."    The  Grego- 
rian Age  finds  itself  the  inspiring  genius  of  twentieth-century 
music. 


4  THE    RELATION    OF 

years.  A'ristoxenus 1  writes  of  the  fourth  as  a  funda- 
mental relation,  and  I  find  in  my  experiments  that  it 
has  the  relation  in  the  chromatique  scale  that  the 
fixed  signs  have  in  the  Zodiac.  The  third,  on  the 
contrary,  which  has  become  pleasing  to  the  ear  of 
the  Western  world,  connotes — if  my  experiments 
are  true  —  the  element  of  Fire  to  an  extent  which 
may  be  Responsible  for  disaster  through  that  ele- 
ment. The  Greek  arrangements  of  the  tones  within 
the  octave  were  called  the  Modes,  and  you  can  find 
them  for  yourselves  readily  by  using  just  the  white 
keys  of  the  piano  and  making  an  octave,  C  to  C 
(our  Major)  ;  D  to  D,  the  Phrygian;  and  E  to  E, 
the  Dorian  mode.  The  others  can  easily  be  added, 
for  the  principle  is  the  same.2  The  semitone  will 
come  respectively  at  the  end  of  each  tetrachord  or 
half  of  the  octave,  in  the  middle  of  each  and  at  the 
beginning  of  each.  In  our  twentieth-century  music 
the  modes  are  largely  used,  but  generally  as  a  man- 
ner only  —  a  new  language  in  which  to  say  the  same 
old  things.  For  we  have  as  yet  no  Canon  of  Musical 
Art,  —  as  the  Chinese  have  in  painting,  their  Six 
Canons,3  —  and  potencies  are  ignored. 

1  Re  The  Fourth,  in  which  the  higher  note  is  tonic :  "  This 
melodic  interval  .  .  .  may  be  regarded  as  the  fundamental 
sound  relation  of  Greek  music."  —  "Aristoxenus,"  by  Macran. 

a  Bourgault  Ducoudray,  "  Melodies  Populaires  de  Grece 
et  d'Orient."  See  preface,  La  Formation  des  Gammes  Dia- 
toniques. 

*  Petrucci  ("  La  Philosophic  de  la  Nature  dans  1'Art  de 
I'Extreme-Orient,"  p.  89).  i.  La  consonnance  de  1'esprit  en- 
gendre  le  mouvement  [de  la  vie].  2.  La  loi  des  os  au  moyen 
du  pinceau.  3.  La  forme  representee  dans  la  conformite  avec 
les  etres.  4.  Selon  la  similitude  [des  objets]  distribuer  la 
couleur.  5.  Disposer  les  lignes  et  leur  attribuer  leur  place 
hierarchique.  6.  Propager  les  formes  en  les  faisant  passer 
dans  le  dessin. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     5 

Combarieu  attributes  the  deformation  of  ethni- 
cal value  of  the  modes  to  ignorance  and  haste.  It 
is  obvious,  then,  that  to  preserve  the  value  to 
humanity  of  musical  creation,  there  must  be  leaders 
who  do  not  hurry.  The  deeper  inner  senses  work 
in  silence.  Frederick  Bligh  Bond,1  in  "The  Gate 
of  Remembrance,"  speaks  of  pictures  spontaneously 
apparent  to  the  student  when  in  a  state  of  mental 
passivity  after  intellectual  effort  in  the  particular 
direction  needed.  The  italics  are  in  the  original. 
Some  inner  sense  of  ours,  as  yet  unnamed,  veri- 
fies true  and  spontaneous  concepts  when  we  are 
sufficiently  moved  to  lose  account  of  sense  impres- 
sions. Wagner  writes  in  his  essay  on  Religion  and 
Art:2  "In  solemn  hours,  when  all  the  world's 
appearances  dissolve  away  as  in  a  prophet's  dream, 
we  seem  already  to  partake  of  redemption  in  ad- 
vance." And  he  says  elsewhere,  "The  soul  of 
mankind  arises  from  the  abyss  of  semblances" 

The  Chinese  music  was  in  ancient  times  conceived 
according  to  a  given  tone,  supplemented  by  other 
tones  according  to  planetary  influences.  Ambros, 
the  musical  historian,  accredits  the  origin  of  Chinese 
music  to  Fuh-Si,  but  I  understand  that  Fuh-Si  was 
a  dynasty  of  sages  and  not  a  man;  and  that  all 
Chinese  culture  had  its  origin  in  Fuh-Si!  Chinese 
music  is  metaphysical  in  its  quality.  Each  tone  has 
a  colour,  a  cosmic  aspect,  a  human  correspondence, 
a  gesture,  a  number,  an  element,  a  trigram  and  a 
relative  phase  of  consciousness.  This  matter  be- 
comes very  intricate  and  I  will  only  reproduce 

1  Frederick  Bligh  Bond,  "  The  Gate  of  Remembrance." 
?  "  Religion  and  Art."     Prose  Works,  trans,  by  Ellis. 


6  THE   RELATION   OF 

enough  to  serve  as  a  point  of  departure  for  the 
devout  explorer.  This  working  out  is  from  Eking 
(Japanese  Ekki),  a  philosophical  medium  employed 
by  the  Zen  sect  of  the  Buddhists. 

Among  the  Greek  modes  the  Dorian  appealed  to 
me  by  its  quality,  not  merely  because  the  Hindus 
were  said  to  use  it  for  their  tender  songs  and  the 
Greeks  considered  it  the  mode  par  excellence ;  neither 
because  it  had  been  preserved  in  the  music  of  various 
ancient  established  churches  and  in  the  folk  song 
of  Celtic  and  Slavonic  countries.  These  facts,  to 
be  sure,  would  be  sufficient  to  engage  the  attention 
and  fix  it  upon  the  Dorian  mode;  but  the  quality 
that  I  felt  in  it  was  underneath  and  behind  these 
facts  as  a  truth  shines  faintly  through  an  ancient 
myth.  The  Japanese  philosopher,  Sasaki  Shigetz, 
has  furnished  me  with  an  explanation  of  my  re- 
sponse to  the  Dorian  mode.  That  mode  lies  from 
E  to  E  on  the  white  keys  of  the  piano,  and  A  is  the 
tonic.  It  is  one  of  the  modes  which,  having  their 
two  halves  alike  in  shape,  have  their  scale  tone  on 
their  dominant.  In  other  words,  the  fourth  note  is 
the  tonic.1 


1  At  the  back  of  all  systems  that  I  have  investigated  I  find 
the  interval  of  the  Fourth  to  be  fundamental.  The  old  Greek 
arrangement  of  two  tetrachords,  E  F  A,  B  C  E,  was  called 
the  scale  of  Olympus,  and  those  notes  represent  according  to 
Plutarch  the  numbers  6,  8,  9,  12;  proportions  which,  to  the 
Greeks,  symbolized  perfection. 

"  The  theory  of  ancient  music  seems  constructed  from  a 
study  of  harmonic  relations  existing  between  the  parts  of  the 
universe;  and  the  musical  canon  was  also  probably  based 
upon  certain  symmetrical  consonances  discovered  in  the  pro- 
portions of  the  planets  and  the  intervals  between  their  or- 
bits." —  "  The  Canon."  Anon.  Published  by  Elkin  Matthews, 
London. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC    7 

The  tone  E  is  mana-consciousness.  Its  corre- 
spondence among  the  elements  is  the  Air.  That 
consciousness  is  half  human,  half  of  the  earth.  It 
is  the  state  of  semiconscious  infancy.  In  the  adult 
it  is  that  state  of  semiconsciousness  which  is  mani- 
fest in  moods.  By  a  semitone  E  slides  into  F,  the 
passions ;  as  B,  the  dream,  slides  by  a  semitone  into 
C,  which  is  intuition.  I  give  this  as  an  explanation 
from  Oriental  sources  of  the  presence  of  the  semi- 
tones in  our  diatonic  scale.  To  revert  to  E,  in  its 
relation  to  the  sky  it  is  the  wind;  relating  to  the 
earth  it  is  a  tree ;  relating  to  man  it  is  a  mood.  It 
refers  to  the  ear  and  to  sound;  therefore  with  ref- 
erence to  Art  it  is  Music.  The  corresponding 
colour  is  green  (chrome  green).  In  taste,  the  near- 
est approach  to  its  correspondence  is  the  flavour  of 
chicken  liver.  The  gesture  corresponding  to  E  is 
from  right  to  left. 

It  is  perhaps  such  connotations  in  the  world  of 
sense  that  induced  Scriabin  to  write  to  Briant- 
chaninoff  after  the  outbreak  of  the  great  war,  and 
just  before  his  death,  with  regard  to  world  con- 
ditions at  that  moment :  "  At  such  a  time  one  wants 
to  cry  aloud  to  all  who  are  capable  of  new  concep- 
tions, scientists,  and  artists,  who  have  hitherto  held 
aloof  from  the  common  life,  but  who,  in  fact,  are 
unconsciously  creating  history.  The  time  has  come 
to  summon  them  to  the  construction  of  new  forms, 
and  the  solution  of  new  synthetic  problems.  These 
problems  are  not  yet  fully  recognized,  but  are  dimly 
perceptible  in  the  quest  of  complex  experiences,  in 
tendencies  such  as  those  manifested  by  artists  to 
reunite  arts  which  have  hitherto  been  differentiated, 


8  THE   RELATION    OF 

to  federate  provinces  heretofore  entirely  foreign  to 
one  another.  The  public  is  particularly  aroused  by 
the  performance  of  productions  which  have  philo- 
sophic ideas  as  a  basis,  and  combine  the  elements 
of  various  arts.  Personally  I  was  distinctly  con- 
scious of  this  at  the  fine  rendering  of  Prometheus 
at  the  Queen's  Hall,  London.  As  I  now  reflect  on 
the  meaning  of  the  war,  I  am  inclined  to  attribute 
the  public  enthusiasm,  which  touched  me  so  greatly 
at  the  time,  not  so  much  to  the  musical  side  of  the 
work  as  to  its  combination  of  music  and  mysti- 
cism." *  Students  of  Scriabin  will  recall  the  words 
of  Dr.  Eaglefield  Hull  in  speaking  of  the  Mystery, 
Scriabin's  unfinished  work  at  the  time  of  his  death : 
"  This  work  promised  music  on  higher  planes  than 
those  hitherto  reached,  —  the  opening  of  new  worlds 
of  beauty  by  the  creation  of  a  synthesis  of  the 
acoustic,  the  optical,  the  choreographic,  and  the 
plastic  arts  united  into  one  whole  by  a  central  mystic 
and  religious  idea." 

Perhaps  it  is  a  childish  fear  on  my  part  of  being 
left  alone  in  this  room  that  has  made  me  drag 
Scriabin  in  by  the  hand.  But  fortified  by  his 
sympathetic  presence  I  have  courage  to  show  you 
more  of  my  Dorian  treasures  with  the  light  of  Ekki 
shining  upon  them. 

The  analogues  just  presented  are  of  the  tone  E 
pure  and  simple,  not  affected  by  the  shade  of  any 
other  tone;  for  we  are  regarding  it  as  the  initial 
note  or  scale  tone  of  a  mode.  But  when  we  cognize 
A,  the  tonic  in  this  (Dorian)  scale,  it  must  be  in  the 
E  shade;  and  its  analysis  in  that  connection  would 

1  Dr.  A.  Eaglefield  Hull,  "  Scriabin,"  p.  70. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     9 

be  as  follows:  A  in  the  E  shade  represents  pure 
Spiritual  Power  —  not  in  the  least  degree  material. 
In  man  it  is  the  reflection  of  the  Divine  Will ;  with 
reference  to  the  sky  it  is  lightning;  with  reference 
to  the  seasons,  it  is  Spring;  of  day  it  is  Dawn  —  the 
return,  the  resurrection ;  of  the  human  body  it  is  the 
left  foot ;  referring1  to  the  face  it  is  the  jaw,  because 
it  is  a  power  that  crushes. 

In  the  words  of  my  authority :  "This  power  comes 
from  the  sky  in  the  Autumn  and  reappears  from 
the  earth  in  the  Spring.  That  time  they  shake  and 
the  very  fine  power  shakes  and  cracks;  and  breaks 
the  seed  and  brings  it  up  to  the  surface  of  the 
earth  and  opens  the  flowers  of  the  trees  and  the 
grasses.  But  at  the  beginning  of  the  year  the  power 
is  very  feeble  and  increases  in  February  and  is  com- 
plete in  March  (Chinese  weather).  Then  purple 
turns  to  green  and  this  power  vibrates  the  green 
leaves  in  the  air  as  it  shook  the  seeds  in  the  ground. 
It  remains  in  the  sky  till  September  and  makes  the 
great  storms." 

In  colour  this  A  is  the  blue-purple  of  an  electric 
spark.  With  reference  to  art  it  is  sheer  power;  not 
intellect,  not  any  wisdom,  but  monistic  power. 
Therefore  the  art  typified  by  the  tone  A  would  be 
athletics.  According  to  my  own  experiments  the 
scale  tone  and  tonic  of  the  Dorian  mode  represent 
Saturn  and  the  Sun,  Leo  and  Capricorn,  the  triangle 
and  the  hexagon ;  and  the  scale  tone  is  representative 
of  St.  Mark.  I  must  confess  that  most  of  the  books 
on  musical  history  have  only  stimulated  me  to  fresh 
research,  to  controvert  the  shallow  and  bigoted 
opinions  they  present.  I  think  it  was  Ezra  Pound 


10  THE   RELATION    OF 

who  remarked  trenchantly  that  the  first  requisite  of 
art  was  a  lack  of  dullness.  Is  there  anything  as  dull 
as  a  book  on  Musical  History?  It  is  from  other 
studies  that  I  have  learned  most  about  the  essence 
of  music:  quaint  books  on  the  human  race  in 
other  phases  of  expression  and  aspiration;  books 
on  ethnology,  architecture,  transcendentalism  and 
literature. 

The  Greek  modes  have  been  in  disuse  in  Euro- 
pean music  really  only  since  the  Reformation,  and 
the  music  of  Celtic  and  Slavonic  peoples  has  never 
quite  forsaken  them.1  2  3  The  deformed  Lydian 
mode,  which  we  call  the  Major  scale,  has  in  other 
European  countries  for  a  quarter  of  a  millennium 
borne  the  burden  of  all  emotions.  Please  do  not 


1  Irish  Folk  Songs,  harmonized  by  Hughes. 

3  Breton  Folk  Songs,  harmonized  by  Bourgault  Ducoudray. 

1  "  There  is  not  a  country  in  Western  Europe  that  can 
boast  such  great  antiquity  for  its  music  as  can  Ireland,"  main- 
tains Fiske  O'Hara.  The  popular  Irish  tenor  is  an  enthusiast 
on  the  subject  of  Celtic  music  and  literature,  and  has  made  a 
deeper  study  of  it  than  most  singers. 

"  The  melodies  we  admire  so  much  today  can  often  be 
traced  back  to  an  eastern  or  oriental  origin,"  he  says.  "  It  is 
a  far  cry  from  the  present  time  back  to  the  days  of  St. 
Ambrose,  in  the  fourth  century,  but  we  have  to  go  back  there 
to  get  at  the  root  of  the  question,  if  indeed  we  may  stop 
there.  Some  of  our  historians  trace  the  Irish  harp  back  to 
the  Egyptians,  from  whom  the  early  Milesian  adventurers  ob- 
tained it.  The  date  of  their  arrival  in  Ireland  is  estimated 
at  about  2,000  B.C. 

"  In  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century,  St.  Ambrose  went  to 
Syria  and  Palestine  and  collected  a  number  of  the  traditional 
Hebrew  melodies,  to  which  he  adapted  the  early  Christian 
hymns.  He  also  brought  back  with  him  a  system  of  musical 
notation,  consisting  of  four  scales,  which  have  since  been 
known  as  the  Ambrosian  Modes.  These  were  brought  to 
Ireland  by  the  ecclesiastics  under  St.  Patrick.  Most  of  the 
early  Irish  melodies  were  composed  on  these  scales." — Detroit 
Free  Press, 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     11 

think  me  altogether  profane  when  I  speak  of  our 
limited  material.  It  is  hard,  I  know,  to  dissociate 
a  melody  from  its  accustomed  reactions  on  our  own 
nerve  centers.  Yet  I  do  not  think  we  can,  for  ex- 
ample, better  express,  three  such  varied  sentiments 
than  by  these  modifications  of  identical  material.1 

Moderato 


Remove  the  words  from  our  songs  and  intrinsi- 
cally what  is  the  content?  Is  it  life  or  is  it  death 
we  are  singing  of?  Is  it  winter  or  summer  we  are 

*  Father  W.  J.  Finn,  conductor  of  the  Paulist  Choristers  of 
Chicago,  said,  "  The  Agnus  Dei  in  the  St.  Cecelia  Mass  is 
noble  and  exalting  sung  with  the  words  and  its  proper  ex- 
pression. But  strip  it  of  its  text  and  what  meaning  remains?  " 
He  adds :  "  Hear  Caruso  sing  Percy  Kahn's  setting  of  the 
Ave  Maria  and  Caruso's  interpretation  is  spiritual ;  but  take 
away  the  text  and  Kahn's  Ave  Maria  will  be  a  good  substitute 
for  Canio's  Lament." 

In  this  connection  I  would  refer  you  to  "  Musical  Accom- 
paniment of  Moving  Pictures,"  by  E.  Lang  and  G.  West,  pub- 
lished by  Boston  Music  Co.  The  chapter  on  Special  Effects 
and  How  to  Produce  Them  throws  new  light  on  the  lack  of 
valid  emotional  significance  in  our  nineteenth-century  music. 


12 


THE    RELATION    OF 


singing  in?  Is  it  a  warlike  band  or  a  dreaming 
child  that  we  are  singing  to  ?  Who  knows,  from  our 
music?  And  the  composer,  in  despair,  writes 
Espressivo. 

Music  has  fallen  upon  evil  days  in  the  dark  ages 
since  her  divorce  from  religion.  May  I  be  forgiven 
for  recalling  to  your  mind,  in  the  event  of  your 
having  recently  thought  only  in  the  idiom  of  our 
customary  European  music,  a  few  of  the  old  Greek 
modes  with  their  names?  I  will  use  C  as  the  scale 
tone  of  each,  to  present  the  various  qualities  of  the 
modes  more  distinctly.  There  are  too  many  with 
their  fourfold  uses  to  dilate  upon  exhaustively,  but 
I  can  refer  you  with  confidence  to  the  preface  in 
the  book  by  Bourgault  Ducoudray,  "  Melodies  Popu- 
laires  de  Grece  et  d'Orient." 


DORIAN: 


Tonic 


PHRYGIAN: 


S 


LYDIAN: 


^ 


HYPODORIAN: 


« 


-(51- 


i 


1 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     13 

HYPOPHRYGIAN: 


3=fc 


i 


CHROMATIQUE-ORIENTALE  : 


Now  there  were  some  hybrids  in  use  in  olden 
times  as  well  as  the  pure  modes,  and  under  the 
alias  of  the  minor  scale  one  of  them  has  long  been 
in  our  midst.  If  you  look  at  the  harmonic  minor 
scale,  dividing  it  in  the  middle,  you  will  see  that  it 
is  a  combination  of  a  Phrygian  lower  tetrachord 
with  an  upper  tetrachord  Chromatique-Orientale. 


The  Chromatique-Orientale  is  a  very  interesting 
mode.  While  I  was  studying  these  matters  in  Lon- 
don I  had  a  Greek  magazine  published  in  Constan- 
tinople called  Mowucfj.  In  that  magazine  there  was 
a  fragment  of  Ancient  Greek  music  in  this  mode 
translated  by  Pachtikos  into  modern  notation.  The 
mode  dates  from  what  we  would  call  almost  pre- 
historic times.  I  cannot  find  its  Oriental  origin,  for 
while  it  is  common  in  modern  Russian  music,  some 
Jewish  students  tell  me  it  is  like  the  music  in  the 
Synagogue.  M.  Saint-Saens  told  me  that  he  had 
heard  it  in  Egypt,  and  a  Greek  writer  for  whom 
I  played  my  song  "  Mystic  Shadow,"  written  in 
the  mode  Chromatique-Orientale,  mistook  it  for 


14  THE    RELATION    OF 

the  popular  song  "  Galaxide,"  named  after  a  coast 
town  in  Greece.1 

MYSTIC  SHADOW.    Composed  London,  1912. 


To  show  you  the  "virtue"  or  power  of  these 
modes  let  me  take  a  familiar  four-bar  phrase  using 
C  as  the  scale  tone  and  beginning  the  tune  on  the 
third  from  the  tonic  in  every  one  of  the  modes. 


i     vn  vi    v 


m   iv 


DORIAN 


SS^=^E^^=|-^f-H 


III    IV 


PHRYGIAN 


1  See  "  Musical  Scales  of  the  Hindus,"  by  Sourinda  Mohun 
Tagore  (Calcutta,  I.  C.  Bose  &  Co.).  Of  the  Sampurna  That, 
or  Scales  of  7  notes,  the  ninth  Scale  is  the  Chromatique- 
Orientale. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     15 

CHROMATIQUE-ORIENTALE 


HYPO-CHROMATIQUE-ORIENTALE 


ARCHAIC  USE  OF  OUR  "'MINOR" 


In  using  these  modes  for  your  own  amusement 
or  instruction  the  best  results  are  obtained  by  first 
considering  each  mode  as  you  would  C  Major  in  the 
beginning  of  the  first  year  of  harmony.  Then  when 
you  really  write  naturally  in  a  mode,  its  quality  is 
most  pronounced  and  most  interesting  if  you  use 
the  pure  material  without  any  accidentals.  Ravel  in 
his  Greek  songs  has  made  good  use  of  the  modes, 
but  never  in  so  convincing  a  way  as  Grovlez. 
Grovlez  is,  I  understand,  a  product  of  the  Scola 
Cantorum  in  Paris,  of  which  Vincent  d'Indy  is  the 
head;  and  the  most  charming  use  of  the  Dorian 
mode  in  any  piano  composition  that  I  know,  exists 
in  the  little  Sarabande  in  a  slender  volume  by  Gabriel 
Grovlez.1  Incidentally,  the  Chanson  du  Chasseur  in 
this  same  volume  is  written  in  the  Lydian  mode  in 
A  with  D  for  the  tonic.  The  effect  is  that  of  D 
Major  with  G*  in  it,  which  of  course  would  not  be 
D  Major  at  all ;  and  the  thing  could  no  more  have 
been  written  from  such  a  confused  basis  of  thought 

1  "Almanach  aux  Images,"  by  Gabriel  Grovlez. 


16 


THE    RELATION    OF 


than  could  the  Scriabin  Prelude,  Opus  51,  marked 
Lugubre,  beginning 


have  been  written  in  A  minor  as  musicians  have  in- 
sisted. The  essential  features  of  A  minor  are  lack- 
ing. This  Prelude  is  written  in  a  hybrid  scale  on  E, 


as  consistent  a  mode  as  our  ordinary  mongrel  of 
Phrygian  and  Chromatique-Orientale.  The  only 
difference  is  that  Scriabin  used  here  a  Dorian  lower 
tetrachord  instead  of  a  Phrygian 


m 


instead 


and  has  founded  the  scale  on  its  dominant  in  ancient 
fashion,  making  the  fourth  the  tonic.  For  you  have 
only  to  read  the  "  Evolution  of  Form  in  Music"  by 
Margaret  Glyn  or  the  preface  to  Bourgault  Ducou- 
dray's  book  of  Greek  folk  songs  to  perceive  the 
normality  of  this  separation  of  scale  tone  from  tonic. 
One  great  error  in  German  and  English  instruc- 
tion in  counterpoint  is  the  lack  of  recognition  of 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     17 

this  duality.1  As  in  perfect  rhythm  the  accent  is 
independent  of  the  beat,  the  scale  tone  and  tonic  in  a 
perfectly  conceived  mode  have  their  individual  enti- 
ties which  may  or  may  not  be  identical.  One  of  our 
losses  during  the  recent  centuries  of  music  came 
through  the  identification  of  scale  tone  with  tonic, 
destroying  the  virtue  of  the  mode,  just  as  by  com- 
mon acceptance  due  to  vulgarization  of  rhythmic 
concepts,  thesis  and  accent  have  become  synonymous, 
destroying  the  virtue  of  the  rhythm.  As  Doctor 
Hull  points  out  in  his  book  on  "  Modern  Harmony," 
many  of  the  great  composers  of  the  recent  era  have 
at  moments  overstepped  the  proscribed  boundaries 
of  the  major  and  minor  scales  and  wandered  into  the 
preserves  of  this  neighbouring  kingdom  of  the  modes. 
The  Chopin  Fantasie  opens  not  in  F  minor  but 
in  the  Dorian  mode  in  C  that  has  F  for  its  tonic, 


and  the  Liszt  Sonata  opens  with  a  phrase  in  that 
same  mode  repeated  in  the  Chromatique-Orientale. 


It  is  a  poignant  use  of  this  material  that  Liszt  dis- 
plays.    The  exotic  note  of  mystery  with  which  he 

1  The  so-called  "  Tonics  "  and  "  Dominants  "  appertaining 
to  the  ancient  church  use  are  here  shown  for  the  sake  of 
completeness,  although  the  modern  composer  is  entirely  un- 
affected by  them.  This  indifference  leaves  the  Aeolian  ident- 
ical with  the  Hypodorian,  the  Hypomixolydian  with  the 
Dorian,  the  Hypoaeolian  with  the  Phrygian,  while  the  Hypo- 
lydian  coincides  with  our  major  scale.  Hull,  "  Modern  Har- 
mony," p.  25.  Compare  Bourgault  Ducoudray. 


18  THE    RELATION    OF 

opens  the  Sonata  is  repeated  just  before  the  Fugue 
and  reappears  at  the  close  of  this  eloquent  work. 
But  Liszt  was  close  to  the  church  which  conserves 
the  Mysteries  for  us,  and  perhaps  it  would  not  be 
idle  to  give  his  B  minor  Sonata  the  subtitle  of  "  The 
Earth-life  Dream." 

There  is  no  reason,  of  course,  why  a  mode  should 
lend  itself  immediately  to  our  service,  or  be  spon- 
taneously as  flexible  to  our  hand  as  an  accustomed 
tonality.  An  Asiatic  would  not  be  able  to  employ 
the  major  scale  with  little  love  and  great  success. 
The  novel  chords  and  sequences  arising  out  of  a 
given  mode  must  appear  as  normal,  as  inevitable  to 
us  as  the  VI,  II,  V,  I  of  our  customary  scale,  before 
that  mode  has  become  our  language  in  which  we  can 
speak  without  premeditation.  If  you  do  not  realize 
what  this  shifting  of  unconscious  anticipation  means, 
try  to  transpose  at  sight  my  simple  little  Russian 
Cradle  Song,1  in  which  there  is  just  one  accidental 
before  the  last  refrain,  or  my  Dorian  Lullaby,2 
which  has  none  at  all. 

Arthur  Farwell  was  kindled  by  my  enthusiasm 
for  the  modes  to  make  an  interesting  Phrygian  ex- 
periment in  "  The  Evergreen  Tree."  3 

Charles  Griffes  discerned  in  the  Chromatique- 
Orientale  the  charm  that  led  me  to  introduce  it  to 
him,  and  this  gifted  artist,  whose  loss  is  a  blow  to 
American  music,  made  his  first  use  of  the  scale 
Chromatique-Orientale  in  "The  Kairn  of  Korid- 

1  "Russian  Cradle  Song"  (Arthur  P.  Schmidt,  Boston). 
"Dorian  Lullaby"   (Boston  Music  Co.). 

8  Percy  Mackaye  and  Arthur  Farwell,  "  The  Evergreen 
Tree,"  A  Christmas  Community  Masque  of  the  Tree  of  Light. 
The  John  Church  Co. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     19 

wen,"  a  Dance  Drama  which  was  presented  at 
the  Neighbourhood  Playhouse  in  1917.  His  har- 
monization of  old  Chinese  songs  (published  by 
Schirmer)  made  of  five,  six,  and  seven-tone  scales, 
is  scholarly  and  beautiful,  and  does  certainly  present 
"a  lack  of  dullness."  Even  more  than  that,  it  re- 
veals an  immersion  of  himself  in  the  mode  chosen. 
Surely,  certain  composers  of  the  black-walnut  period 
have  used  the  modes,  but  from  without  rather  than 
within  the  realm  of  their  spontaneous  creating. 
They  used  the  modes,  that  is  all.  Brahms  used 
them,  but  he  assimilated  them,  as  Bantock  does. 
He  used  them  by  taking  them  into  himself,  which  is 
Analysis,  instead  of  going  out  into  them,  which  is 
Sympathy.1  The  Dial,  some  time  ago,  made  a  dis- 
criminating criticism  of  a  book  in  saying,  "  It  sug- 
gests the  book  of  a  writer  who  has  attempted  to 
immerse  himself  in  the  subject  but  has  not  absorbed 
its  implications." 

There  is  an  axiom,  "  Generation  from  generation 
is  never  fecund."  The  meaning  is  this:  Creation 
was  complete  in  the  beginning.  Formation,  or  gen- 
eration, has  continuously  taken  place  since  the  be- 
ginning, but  nothing  more  has  been  created.  Now 
in  the  microcosm  as  in  the  macrocosm,  there  is  the 
World  of  Formation  and  there  is  the  World  of 
Creation.  Whether  you  wish  to  regard  the  World 
of  Formation  as  a  mere  sense  perception  is  your 
own  privilege  to  decide ; 2  but  a  word,  a  thought,  a 
person  even,  generated,  has  of  necessity  to  be  reborn, 
or  enter  the  World  of  Creation,  before  power  is 

1  G.  R.  S.  Mead,  "  Quests  Old  and  New." 

*  Cobb,  "  Mysticism  and  the  Creed,"  p.  140,  par.  2. 


20 

acquired,  before  it  becomes  fecund.  The  stolen 
thought,  the  borrowed  word,  the  Tomlinson  of  a 
man,  is  only  generation  from  generation.  There  is 
not  that  force  of  Nature  in  it  which  makes  things 
move.  Of  our  American  music  Ernest  Newman 
writes  in  the  Manchester  Guardian:  "  For  so  original 
a  nation  in  many  matters  the  Americans  are  curi- 
ously imitative  in  music.  Their  MacDowell  and 
Loeffler  and  Parker  and  Hadley  and  all  the  rest  of 
them  that  are  known  over  here  are  second-hand 
talents;  almost  everything  they  have  to  say  has 
already  been  said  in  some  form  or  another  by  some 
one  else  ...  it  comes  to  us  only  as  the  reflection 
in  a  mirror,  a  distillation  of  some  one  else's  brew." 

The  whole-tone  scale  is  an  important  factor  in 
the  music  of  the  early  twentieth  century,  but  so  far 
as  I  know,  it  is  negligible  as  an  element  in  archaic 
music.  Comment  of  mine  added  to  the  writings  of 
Clutsam,1  Hull,2  and  Lenormand3  on  this  scale 
would  be  little  short  of  impertinence,  for  the  only 
original  offering  I  have  to  make  in  connection 
with  the  whole-tone  scale  is  its  supermundane 
correspondences.  Since  this  working-out  is  only 
empirical,  I  will  merely  say  that  the  strongest 
correspondences  I  find  here  are  Earth  and  Air. 

The  fundamental  tonal  arrangements  in  ultra- 
modern music  that  have  a  specific  relation  to  archaic 
music  are  the  Greek  modes,  the  Scriabin  scales,  and 

1  "The  Whole-tone  Scale  and  its  Practical  Use."  The 
Musical  Times,  Nov.  I,  1910.  Vol.  51,  p.  702. 

*  A.  Eaglefield  Hull,  "Modern  Harmony"  (Augener). 
Chap.  V. 

1  Lenormand,  "A  Study  of  Modern  Harmony."  (Boston 
Music  Co.).  Chap.  X. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     21 

the  duodecuple  scale.  Now  the  duodecuple,  or  scale 
of  twelve  equal  divisions  within  the  octave  without 
a  tonic  or  center  of  repose,  is  found  in  aboriginal 
music,  notably  that  of  the  American  Indians.  For 
many  years  music  of  the  Indians  of  the  West  had 
been  transcribed  by  ear.  Then  the  Hemenway 
Southwestern  Expedition  made  more  scientific  at- 
tempts at  recording  this  music,  and  the  phonograph 
revealed  grave  inaccuracies  in  aural  records  previ- 
ously made.  Benjamin  Ives  Oilman  writes  of  a 
Hopi  Snake-song,1  "  The  singer  delivers  the  melody 
with  the  lithe  security  with  which  he  handles  the 
snake  in  whose  honour  it  is  chanted.  Armour  for 
defense  and  a  scale  for  guidance  would  alike  be 
gratuitous  hindrances." 

This  duodecuple  scale  is  used  by  Stravinski,  Schon- 
berg,  and  Ornstein  with  good  effect.  Many  moderns 
attempt  its  use,  but  freedom  from  a  subconscious 
sense  of  tonality  is  as  rare  and  difficult  of  attainment 
as  freedom  from  a  subconscious  sense  of  authority. 
With  some  success  the  Dalcroze  school  in  its  im- 
provisations makes  use  of  the  duodecuple  scale. 
Emancipation  from  a  tonic  center  is  doubtless  a  con- 
notation in  the  art-world  of  the  change  of  ideals 
in  the  political  and  religious  worlds.2  As  in  Hindu 
music3  there  were  many  deities  and  many  scales,4 

1  A  Journal  of  American  Ethnology  and  Archaeology, 
Vol.  V.  Houphton  Mifflin,  1908. 

*  Walter  Morse  Rummel,  "  Hesternae  Rosae,"  Serta  II. 
Preface. 

3  Shahinda,  "  Indian  Music."     Wm.  Marchant  &  Co.,  The 
Goupil  Gallery,  5  Regent  St.,  London.    Preface  by  F.  Gilbert 
Webb.    "  The  music  of  all  countries  is  ever  the  echo  of  the 
idiosyncrasies  and  mental  states  of  its  producers." 

4  Rajah     Comm.     Sourindro    Mohun     Tagore,     "  Musical 
Scales  of  the  Hindus." 


22  THE    RELATION    OF 

each  under  its  own  ruling  spirit,  so  in  less  eastern 
lands  there  was  the  rule  of  the  planets  with  Tonic 
and  Dominant  or  King  and  Priest.  Then  in  place 
of  Modality,  which  involved  these  two  under  plane- 
tary influences,  came  the  new  order  under  Protes- 
tantism, its  very  ignorance  possibly  under  divine 
guidance  leading  toward  a  purer  monism  or  unity. 
Thus  came  Tonality  the  King,  a  powerfully  mag- 
netized center;  then  equal  freedom  of  the  twelve 
tones  without  domination,  analogous  perhaps  on 
the  positive  and  negative  planes  to  Democracy  and 
Anarchy.  //  "  Armour  for  defense  and  a  scale  for 
guidance  "  are  really  "  alike  gratuitous  hindrances," 
then  the  scheme  may  be  justified,  and  with  it  who 
knows  but  that  we  are  even  now  entering  upon  a 
new  era? 

I  would  not  say,  however,  that  our  ultramodern 
music  is  the  last  word  in  music.  I  would  rather 
suggest  that  with  the  achievement  of  a  general 
understanding  of  the  cloistered  mysteries  that  in- 
spired its  source,  we  shall  have  completed  what  I 
would  call  the  Grecian  cycle.  Then  we  can  begin  to 
think  about  ultramodern  music. 

Let  us  conclude  with  a  word  from  that  delightful 
book  by  Claude  Bragdon,  "  Projective  Ornament " : 
"The  new  beauty  which  corresponds  to  the  new 
knowledge,  is  the  beauty  of  principles;  not  the 
world-aspect,  but  the  world-order";  and  a  parallel 
thought  in  the  works  of  one  Fu-Hsi  about  four 
thousand  years  ago :  "  Three  represents  heaven,  two 
the  earth.  The  harmony  of  these  is  the  World- 
order,  of  which  the  image  is  Music." 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     23 


REFERENCES 

Laurence  Binyon,  "  The  Flight  of  the  Dragon." 

W.  F.  Cobb,  D.D.,  "  Mysticism  and  The  Creed." 

Anon.,  "  The  Canon."    Published  by  Elkin  Matthews. 

Macran,  "  Aristoxenus." 

Bourgault  Ducoudray,  "  Melodies  Populaires  de  Grece." 

Petrucci,    "  La    Philosophic    de   la    nature    dans    1'Art    de 

rExtreme-Orient." 

Frederick  Bligh  Bond,  "  The  Gate  of  Remembrance." 
Combarieu. 

Wagner,  "Religion  and  Art"  (Prose  Works). 
Hull,  "  Scriabin." 
Hughes,  "  Irish  Folk  Songs." 
Bourgault  Ducoudray,  "  Breton  Folk  Songs." 
Fiske  O'Hara. 

Heyman,  "  Dorian  Lullaby  " ;  "  Russian  Cradle  Song." 
Griffes,  "  Chinese  Songs." 
Hull,  "  Modern  Harmony." 

Sourindra  Mohun  Tagore,  "Musical  Scales  of  the  Hindus." 
Kawczynski. 

G.  H.  Clutsam,  "  The  Whole-tone  Scale." 
Lenormand,  "  A  Study  of  Modern  Harmony." 
A    Journal    of    American    Ethnology    and    Archaeology, 

Vol.  V. 

Walter  Morse  Rummel,  "  Hesternae  Rosae." 
Shahinda,  "  Indian  Music." 
Claude  Bragdon,  "  Projective  Ornament" 


24  THE    RELATION    OF 


DEBUSSY 

THE  home  is  the  source  of  the  musical  life  of  a 
country,  as  I  hope  to  explain  to  you  in  this 
chapter  on  Claude  Debussy.  Claude  Debussy  shared 
honours  with  Richard  Strauss.  He  is  a  contemporary 
of  Richard  Strauss.  At  the  beginning  of  this  century 
Richard  Strauss  was  a  sensation  from  Germany. 
He  discovered  something.  One  of  our  critical  poets 
has  observed  that  as  a  scientist  does  not  lay  claim 
to  his  title  until  he  has  discovered  something,  neither 
should  the  artist  consider  himself  an  artist  before 
he  has  made  a  discovery.  In  the  nineteenth  century 
Wagner  had  been  a  sensation  from  Germany.  He 
also  had  discovered  something.  It  was  high  time 
for  France  to  find  within  her  borders  a  peer  of  the 
greatest  German  musicians.  In  science  France  has 
always  had  much  to  offer.  In  literature  she  has 
never  been  sterile.  But  music  had  gone  along  in 
Germanic  lines  since  the  early  nineteenth  century. 
Handel,  Haydn,  Mozart,  Beethoven,  Schumann, 
Schubert,  Brahms  —  perhaps  because  of  the  Stich- 
und-Druch,  the  lithography  and  printing  enterprises 
of  Germany  that  served  to  popularize  her  music 
throughout  the  world,  perhaps  because  of  the  Ger- 
man pianos  that  excelled  the  French  Erard  and 
Pleyel,  perhaps  because  in  English-speaking  coun- 
tries our  mediums  of  circulation  of  music  were 
named  Breitkopf  und  Hartel,  Angener,  Schmidt, 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     25 

Schubert,  Schirmer,  Litolff,  Peters,  Fischer.  The 
piano  had  long  been  the  advertising  medium  of 
national  music.  The  piano  was  the  household  pet. 
Mechanical  pianos  have  now  put  the  worthless  piano 
teacher  out  of  business.  The  rank  and  file  would 
rather  turn  on  the  victrola  and  play  a  rag,  the 
domestic  national  music,  than  turn  on  the  embar- 
rassed and  red- faced  schoolgirl  to  play  what  a  pupil 
of  a  pupil  of  a  teacher  in  Germany  had  taught 
her.  The  automatic  instrument  has  established  a 
standard  of  technical  perfection  in  the  rendition  of 
the  classics  for  household  entertainment  that  is  not 
attainable  by  the  novice.  It  has  given  us  a  respite 
from  bad  teaching  and  bad  art  while  we  take  our 
breath  for  the  art  to  come.  And  in  the  respite  the 
spell  of  Germanic  music  is  broken. 

The  first  French  exponent  of  piano  literature  in 
our  time  was  Pugno.  I  doubt  that  even  he  could 
have  excited  much  comment  had  it  not  been  for 
his  association  with  the  violinist  Ysaye.  We  were 
too  accustomed  to  the  German  virtuosi.  The  cre- 
ative interpretations  of  Ysaye  changed  our  ideal  of 
violin  playing,  and  in  the  first  years  of  this  century 
Thibaut  came  to  ratify  our  newly  formed  con- 
cept. Fickle  as  we  are,  the  virtuosity  of  the  Rus- 
sian school  has  now  claimed  our  attention,  but  in 
the  meantime  the  Joachim  superstition  disappeared. 

The  German  vocal  tradition  by  its  very  virtue 
had  become  national  and  limited.  I  mean,  the  songs 
were  beautiful,  the  songs  of  Schumann,  Schubert 
and  Brahms,  largely  because  of  the  gift  those  great 
liederwriters  had  of  fitting  the  vowel  and  consonant 
to  the  tone  and  pitch.  German  lieder  are  untrans- 


26  THE    RELATION    OF 

latable.  Hear  Die  Beiden  Grenadiere  in  French  and 
you  will  be  convinced  if  you  have  doubted  this.  It 
needs  the  real  understanding  of  any  language  to 
present  its  songs.  Each  language  has  its  own 
nuance  and  its  own  quantity.  Then,  too,  the  general 
subject  of  German  songs  is  Love-and-death,  and 
each  national  approach  to  this  theme  is  individual. 

France  had  a  pretty,  light  sort  of  salon  music 
for  the  voice,  Massenet,  Reynaldo  Hahn  and  others, 
that  were  rather  like  Louis  Seize  furniture  —  an 
anachronism  in  the  nineteenth  century.  It  may  have 
been  on  account  of  the  paucity  of  native  impulse 
toward  musical  creativeness  that  the  French  govern- 
ment in  the  early  70' s  sent  out  Bourgault  Ducoudray 
to  the  Near  East  to  bring  home  discoveries  that 
would  inspire  young  artists. 

In  making  the  gesture  away  from  Wagner, 
France  had  first  the  aid  of  Cesar  Franck,  the  Belgian 
composer  who  was  for  many  years  organist  of  the 
Madeleine.  He  employed  modes  and  rhythms  that 
had  been  conserved  in  the  church.  His  pupil  Vincent 
d'Indy  followed  in  his  footsteps,  and  a  disciple  of 
d'Indy  named  Gabriel  Grovlez  has  carried  on  the 
tradition  of  his  master  and  grandmaster.  You  re- 
member undoubtedly  that  it  was  the  idea  of  Cesar 
Franck  to  get  away  from  the  intense  emotionalism 
of  Wagner  which  had  exerted  such  a  powerful  in- 
fluence upon  France.  Those  who  have  followed  in 
the  footsteps  of  Cesar  Franck  may  sound  thin  to  us. 
They  do  not  set  our  emotions  tingling,  they  do  not 
stir  us,  they  do  not  even  worry  us.  Cesar  Franck 
had  a  mystical  quality  which  was  individual.  That 
part  of  his  gift  and  of  his  theory  he  could  not  im- 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     27 

part.  His  songs  are  not  too  interesting,  but  where 
he  has  the  resources  of  the  orchestra  he  exemplifies 
with  great  sincerity  his  anti-Wagnerian  doctrines. 
He  aspired  to  a  spiritual  antithesis  to  Wagner's 
emotionalism,  and  his  impulse  was  undoubtedly  in 
the  direction  of  the  future  of  music. 

Appreciation  of  Franck  was  not  a  political  anti- 
Wagnerian  motive  such  as  that  which  has  fostered 
recognition  of  Debussy.  His  music  was  scholastic, 
monastic,  but  it  was  not  strong  enough.  Its  genius 
was  exclusively  Roman  Catholic,  while  Richard 
Wagner  used  his  emotional  power  for  inclusively 
religious  ends;  and  Richard  Strauss  permitted  his 
emotionalism  derived  from  Wagner  to  be  an  end  in 
itself.  There  we  have  the  musical  status  of  the  two 
countries  in  1900,  the  beginning  of  our  century,  with 
Eulenspiegel  rampant. 

Now  in  1902  they  had  in  France  the  first  per- 
formance of  Debussy's  Pelleas.  Previously  his  Noc- 
turnes had  been  played  by  Chevillard *  and  the  String 
Quartette  by  La  Societe  Nationale.2  Twenty  years 
earlier  Debussy  was  receiving  three  medals  for  theory, 
two  for  piano,  the  first  prize  for  accompanying  at 
the  Conservatoire,  and  receiving  honours  for  counter- 
point and  fugue  at  the  age  of  twenty.  About  that 
time  he  went  to  Russia.  He  frequented  cabarets, 
he  met  the  Russian  gypsies,  he  became  familiar 
with  Moscow.  Arenski  had  made  a  success  with 
his  piano  Concerto  and  was  developing  rhythms. 
Scriabin  was  a  child  of  ten,  already  writing  like 
Chopin.  In  Russia  Debussy  saw  the  score  of  Boris, 

1  Concerts  Chevillard,  Paris,  1900. 

*  Societe  Nationale,  1893,  by  the  Ysaye  Quartette. 


28  THE    RELATION    OF 

which  was  then  unknown.  It  is  no  wonder  that 
he  was  much  influenced  by  this  visit  to  Russia. 
He  had  always  hated  the  restrictions  of  the  har- 
mony book,  in  which  he  was  perhaps  not  different 
from  other  young  students,  but  the  Prix  de  Rome 
and  his  travels  gave  him  authority  which  many 
another  young  composer  might  covet,  to  ignore 
the  sacred  canons  of  a  harmony  book  that  is  re- 
vised from  time  to  time  out  of  sheer  respect  for 
the  genius  who  dares  to  contravene  its  laws.  The 
critics  of  France  rejoiced  in  the  harmonic  eman- 
cipation of  Claude  Debussy.  One  of  them  writes: 
"  We  celebrated  the  cure  of  certain  infected  chords 
that  had  never  been  allowed  to  appear  in  so- 
ciety without  first  being  subjected  to  humiliating 
'  preparations '  and  were  bound  to  accept  inflexible 
'resolutions.'  With  apparent  nonchalance  this 
friend  of  poets  and  painters  turned  the  geography 
of  music  upside  down."  After  the  Russian  visit 
it  was  written  of  him  in  a  French  magazine :  "  The 
Germanic  charm  was  broken  against  this  living, 
free,  picturesque  music.  A  second  journey  to  Bay- 
reuth  turned  him  forever  from  the  idol  that  had  so 
harmed  the  music  of  France."  This  was  written 
by  Mallarme. 

But  then  they  go  on,  these  critics,  writing  be- 
tween 1910  and  1913, — may  I  show  you  what  I 
have  found  in  French  magazines  of  those  years? 
"  He  is  a  profound  image  of  modernity ;  he  is 
modernity.  One  might  almost  say  that  today  De- 
bussy is  all  there  is  of  music  (toute  la  musique}. 
Music  is  Debussy !  " 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Vuillermoz  wrote   in  Le 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     29 

Grand  Revue  in  1913  that  if  Mozart  could  give  us 
his  opinion,  the  fate  of  a  composer  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  twentieth  century  would  look  much 
more  desirable  to  him  than  that  of  a  contemporary 
of  Marie  Antoinette.  Now  let  us  try  to  penetrate 
the  secret  of  Debussy's  charm.  Laloy  writes  of 
him  explaining  the  charm  thus :  "  The  notes  and 
the  lines  are  exalted  to  the  point  of  being  mingled 
in  the  original  emotion.  These  (referring  to 
the  second  book  of  Preludes)  have  a  clear  form, 
which  nevertheless  only  follows  the  line  of  the 
thought.  It  is  as  if  the  thought  were  born  musi- 
cal, or  rather  music  itself.  Chopin  showed  the 
way.  It  was  given  to  Debussy  to  find  the  goal." 
So  we  have  a  composer  whose  thought  creates  its 
own  forms!  Laloy  continues,  anticipating  Mr. 
Cyril  Scott:  "Tonality  is  the  basis  of  classicism. 
The  Symphony  is  a  tonal  edifice  erected  according 
to  fixed  laws.  Everything  conspires  to  affirm  the 
tonality."  We  all  know  —  so  many  bars  in  the 
"tonic,"  so  many  bars  of  the  "dominant,"  "de- 
velopment," "  recapitulation,"  all  revolving  round 
the  fixed  center.  A  change  of  location  of  that 
center  we  call  a  change  of  tonality,  while  it  is  really, 
with  our  equal  temperament,  merely  a  change  of 
pitch.  Tonality,  in  exotic  music,  is  fundamental 
arrangement  of  tones;  a  matter  of  proportion. 
Laloy  continues :  "  In  Asia  there  is  an  infinite  num- 
ber of  tonalities.  Thus  Europe,  enclosed  in  a  uni- 
tonal  system,  has  surrendered  to  the  impetuous 
invasion  of  Oriental  scales  that  have  come  as  re- 
generative agencies.  The  first  to  use  them  were  the 
Russians,  since  their  folklore  was  Slavonic,  almost 


30  THE    RELATION    OF 

Oriental.  But  the  honour  of  extending  this  new  in- 
spiration right  across  Europe  belongs  to  Debussy. 
He  introduced  the  Orient  into  music.  With  him 
classicism  is  dead  form."  This  contrast  drawn  by 
Laloy  between  the  "classic"  and  the  "Oriental"  is 
novel  and  important. 

If  I  am  to  take  your  hands  and  help  you  find 
the  needle  Claude  Debussy  in  the  haystack  of 
modern  music,  it  might  be  well  first  to  locate  the 
haystack.  I  think  it  is  not  starred  as  a  noteworthy 
object  on  tours  through  colleges  or  conservatories 
of  music.  But  it  is  very  noteworthy.  It  is  a  larger 
haystack  than  perhaps  you  know.  On  one  side 
modern  music  touches  antiquity,  on  another  pos- 
terity; a  third  side  is  bounded  by  the  physical  or 
scientific  and  the  fourth  by  the  superphysical  or 
religious.  Such  is  our  Haystack  of  Modern  Music. 

Let  me  explain.  As  for  antiquity :  To  music  in  all 
ancient  civilizations  a  divine  origin  is  attributed. 
In  Finland  music  is  supposed  to  have  come  through 
the  God  Wainominen;  and  in  India  Sarasvahta  the 
spouse  of  Brahma  placed  the  Vina  or  sacred  instru- 
ment in  the  hands  of  Nared.  The  world-wide 
concept  of  the  divinity  of  this  art  appears  to  be  due 
to  the  superphysical  or  magical  powers  ascribed  to 
music.  It  is  in  vocational,  perhaps  e  vocational. 
This  is  the  corner  of  the  haystack  where  the  side 
called  antiquity  meets  the  side  called  the  super- 
physical.  Now  about  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century  the  modes  or  tonal  arrangements  different 
from  the  patterns  of  our  major  and  minor  scales 
came  into  disuse  for  secular  music  in  Europe.  They 
were  conserved  in  certain  places,  namely,  the  Greek 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     31 

and  Roman  Catholic  churches  and  the  folk-song  of 
Slavonic  and  Celtic  countries,  so  we  have  them  now 
to  use  as  the  warp  of  our  new  musical  fabric  to- 
gether with  the  threads  of  our  new  scholarship  spun 
during  these  three  hundred  years.  For  during  this 
length  of  time,  being  practically  limited  to  the  major 
and  minor  scale  arrangements,  we  have  given  our- 
selves to  their  development. 

Both  melody  and  harmony  arise  from  the  mode 
used.  Melody  and  harmony  are  two  of  the  four 
factors  of  music.  The  other  two  are  rhythm  and 
timbre.  As  for  timbre,  you  may  call  it  quality  or 
colour  if  you  like.  As  a  usable  factor,  it  is  a  char- 
acteristic of  Occidental  music.  Oriental  music  has 
monotony  of  colour  because  quality  as  a  calculated 
factor  in  musical  effect  is  a  matter  either  of  key- 
relationship,  or  of  overtones  due  to  polyphony  and 
sympathetic  vibration.  And  only  in  Western  music 
is  there  either  modulation  from  one  key  to  another 
or  the  symphonic  development  called  polyphony.1 

Unless  one  links  Russia  with  the  Oriental  world, 
it  is  obviously  unfair  to  credit  Debussy  with  having 
brought  the  Orient  into  European  music.  France 
is  a  better  center  of  distribution  for  ideas  than  Rus- 
sia, both  on  account  of  the  language  in  which  its 
periodicals  are  printed  and  because  of  the  social  and 

1  "  The  sarangi  player  follows  the  voice,  but  during  pauses 
and  sometimes  while  the  song  continues,  he  indulges  in  florid 
passage  of  his  own.  .  .  .  The  heterophony  of  the  Greeks, 
which  is  dimly  suggested  by  the  sarangi  player's  methods,  was 
an  anticipation  of  the  great  system  of  counterpoint  and  its 
offshoot  harmony  which  have  been  developed  to  the  highest 
pitch  by  the  musicians  of  Europe."  —  The  Ragas  of  Hindu- 
stan, published  by  the  Philharmonic  Society  of  Western  India. 
Poona, 


32  THE    RELATION    OF 

commercial  intercourse  between  its  capital  and  the 
capitals  of  other  countries.  Debussy  did  not  ante- 
date "the  Five"  who  gave  Russian  music  its  place 
in  the  world  today.1 

So  far,  then,  his  fame  rests  not  on  having  intro- 
duced but  on  popularizing  the  forgotten  modes,  and 
on  flying  in  the  face  of  harmony  books.  But  new 
basic  arrangements  of  tones  necessitate  transgres- 
sion of  laws  made  for  the  major  and  minor  modes. 
Resolutions  of  the  I3th  are  different,  cadences  are 
different,  because  tonics  and  scale  tones  are  differ- 
ent. We  no  longer  find  VI,  II,  V,  I  agreeable  and 
soporific  as  that  well-worn  cadence  is  in  the  routine- 
taught  music.  It  is  amazing  that  Debussy  with  his 
sense  of  the  novel  did  not  go  further. 

In  1898,  twenty-three  years  ago,  he  wrote  the 
Chansons  de  Bilitis,  referred  to  by  Chenneviere 
as  delicate  and  voluptuous  visions  of  the  radiant 
decadence  of  Greece.  There  is  no  emotion  in  this 
sort  of  music.  The  cri  de  cceur  that  goes  with  the 
crise  de  nerfs  died  out  with  Strauss  in  Germany 
and  Tschaikowski  in  Russia.  Emotion  in  art  has 
become  either  attenuated  to  a  mental  extract  or 
exalted  to  a  mystic  ecstasy  —  the  first  in  France,  the 
second  in  Russia ;  and  as  an  exquisite  attenuation  of 
French  sentiment,  let  me  commend  to  you  these  four 
songs  of  Bilitis  by  Pierre  Louys  that  Debussy  set 
to  music. 

In  these  songs  he  has  not  abolished  the  major  and 
minor  modes.  He  follows  the  vowel  colour  in  the 
poem  with  subtlety  and  he  uses  many  enharmonic 
devices,  like  his  celebrated  contemporaries;  but  the 

1  Borodin,  Cui,  Balakireff,  Moussorgsky,  Rimsky-Korsakoff. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     33 

content  of  his  art  at  that  time  was  truly  revealed 
in  one  of  the  French  eulogies :  "  Voluptuous,  cor- 
poreal, naturalistic  —  that  is  the  Debussy  art.  He 
sings  beauty  concrete,  the  soul  of  the  universe." 
That  was  the  spirit  of  his  country  in  those  fin  de 
siecle  days.  Here  is  another  discourse  upon  his  art 
by  one  of  his  reviewers :  "  Most  of  us  are  not  pre- 
pared to  receive  this  ideal  communion  with  so  deli- 
cate a  soul  and  such  high  sensibilities.  We  are  not 
used  to  these  agglomerations  of  sound.  We  shrug 
the  shoulders.  Oh,  essence  of  laziness!  A  quoi 
bon?  Oh,  words  thrice  cowardly !  Debussy  has  re- 
juvenated music.  He  has  transformed  the  funda- 
ment (tonality),  the  inspiration,  the  form.  With 
one  stroke  of  his  genius  he  has  accomplished  this 
metamorphosis."  But  let  us  not  forget  that  it  was 
in  the  early  70' s  that  Bourgault  Ducoudray  pub- 
lished his  "  Chansons  de  Grece  et  d'Orient,"  "  hop- 
ing to  extend  the  horizon  of  tonality,"  he  said, 
"among  the  musicians  of  Europe."  And  pedagogi- 
cally  his  work  is  being  carried  on  now  by  his  disciple 
Maurice  Emmanuel  and  by  the  school  of  Jaques 
Dalcroze. 

Debussy's  gift  to  Tonality  was  rather  La  gamme 
par  tons  —  the  whole-tone  scale  —  which,  it  is  said, 
he  heard  sung  by  the  Javanese  at  the  Paris  Exposi- 
tion in  1896. 

Our  one  mode,  the  major,  had  been  dressed  up 
in  greater  and  greater  variety  of  clothes  (called 
accidentals  and  modulations)  until  beyond  what 
Richard  Strauss  gave  her,  there  seemed  nothing 
more  her  frame  could  carry;  so  quite  naturally 
there  has  been  a  reversion  to  Simplicity.  Modern 


34  THE   RELATION    OF 

music  looks  complicated  only  when  we  suspect  it  of 
being  the  old  music  more  thickly  disguised. 

Now  from  the  superphysical  side  of  our  haystack 
we  see  powerful  correspondences  with  tonal  ar- 
rangements in  Egyptian  and  Greek  music.  These 
have  been  revived  in  this  twentieth  century,  but  not 
so  much  by  Debussy  as  by  the  Russians.  Debussy 
has  used  the  ancient  modes  for  colour.  And  in 
colour  he  excels.  His  whole-tone  scale,  however,  is 
the  one  that  lends  most  characteristic  colour  to  his 
music. 


n      m     iv      v      vi    vii 


The  triads  made  in  that  scale  are  always  aug- 
mented. 


I  mean  the  triad  is  always  half  a  tone  bigger  than 
the  major  chord. 


Now  in  this  music  founded  on  the  whole-tone 
scale,  if  you  hear  it  without  an  understanding  of 
the  material  it  is  made  of,  you  have  much  the  same 
feeling  as  when  in  the  streets  of  Paris  the  only 
word  you  understand  is  the  one  that  sounds  like 
English. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     35 

In  1904  Debussy  became  known  in  the  pianistic 
world  through  his  first  "modern"  pieces,1  and  in  1910 
he  published  the  first  book  of  Preludes.  Russia  had 
its  great  composers  and  its  great  pianists  and  its 
great  publishers,  but  Russia  was  remote  from  the 
thought  of  Europe.  The  one  great  piano  teacher 
outside  of  Russia  was  Leschetitzki  in  Vienna,  whose 
repertoire  fatigued  us,  although  his  genius  for  dis- 
covering technical  means  of  presenting  it,  dominated 
us.  Another  excellent  man  was  Matthay  in  Lon- 
don. Godowski  and  Sauer  had  original  ways  of 
manipulating  the  piano  keyboard ;  but  the  discerning 
musicians  went  to  Paris.  Blanche  Selva,  the  cele- 
brated pupil  of  d'Indy,  had  already  given  six  recitals 
in  a  week  in  London,  showing  us  new  resources  of 
the  instrument.  When  I  said  to  her :  "  But  it  does  n't 
sound  like  a  piano,"  she  answered  with  some  sur- 
prise, "  But  that  is  the  aim  of  all  of  us,  is  it  not?" 
Paris  was  not  far  from  London,  and  the  London 
recital  programs  came  to  include  numbers  by  Claude 
Debussy.  In  1913  appeared  his  second  volume  of 
Preludes.  All  this  music  had  to  be  rendered  with 
a  new  use  of  our  human  mechanism  if  we  wished  to 
make  it  sound  as  it  sounded  in  Paris ;  because  the  old, 
clear,  pianistic  resonance  precluded  the  sympathetic 
vibrations  necessary  to  produce  the  overtones  re- 
quired for  the  beauty  of  the  harmonies  that  the 
whole-tone  scale  had  generated.  So  the  honour  is 
really  due  to  Debussy  for  imbuing  piano-playing 
with  a  certain  distinctive  charm.  There  were  artists 
and  there  were  amateurs  who  had  instinctively  used 

1  Laloy,  "  Claude  Debussy." 


86  THE    RELATION    OF 

that  charm  in  their  rendering  of  Chopin,  of  Liszt 
and  even  of  Schumann;  but  in  Debussy's  music  it 
was  indispensable. 

The  Delphic  Dancers  and  the  Sacred  Procession, 
published  in  1910,  are  said  to  have  been  inspired 
by  Greek  bas-reliefs.  There  is  internal  evidence  to 
bear  out  the  statement.  These  compositions  are  un- 
fortunately rarely  heard.  It  is  easy  to  imagine 
here  the  influence  of  Debussy's  friend  Erik  Satie, 
for  there  is  a  smooth  chordal  sequence  moving 
in  stately  fashion  that  is  more  like  the  "  Sonneries 
de  la  Rose-Croix"  than  like  the  free  fancy  of 
Debussy. 

In  writing  of  Debussy,  Lawrence  Oilman  has 
remarked  that  while  certain  of  the  roots  of  his 
music  strike  deep  into  the  fertile  soil  of  Wagner, 
yet  the  product  is  altogether  his  own.  The  things 
he  learned  from  Wagner  aside  from  "  potency  of 
dissonant  combinations,  of  chromatic  relations,  of 
structural  flexibility,"  are  voices  resolving  anywhere 
and  unlawfully  frequent  modulations.  In  "  Clair 
de  Lune  "  you  will  find  a  pretty  souvenir  left  by  the 
Rhine  Maidens.  This  composition  is  an  excellent 
example  of  Debussy's  piano  art :  subtle,  sensuous, 
lacking  in  real  fervour,  lacking  in  rhythmic  inven- 
tion, lacking  in  harmonic  fertility,  when  you  take 
into  consideration  the  free  range  that  he  allowed 
himself,  but  withal  beautifully  proportioned,  and 
exercising  his  peculiar  fascination. 

Now  suppose  we  examine  certain  specimens  of  his 
vocal  art.  He  won  the  Prix  de  Rome  nearly  forty 
years  ago  with  his  opera,  "  L' Enfant  Prodigue."  He 
was  young,  still  battling  the  dried-up  pedants  who 


ULTRAMODERN    TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     37 

deplored  his  modern  tendencies  while  awarding  him 
the  prize.  That  opera  is  the  only  composition  of  his 
that  I  know  in  which  there  is  real  emotion  and  no 
element  of  what  we  call  decadence.  It  is  totally 
different  in  character  from  his  opera  "  Pelleas  et 
Melisande,"  finished  twenty  years  later,  in  which 
there  is  wonderful  subtlety  induced  by  the  words; 
for  Maeterlinck's  book  has  power.  On  the  road 
toward  the  music  of  the  future  Debussy  is  a  land- 
mark ;  but  we  must  work  with  him  intelligently.  He 
is  a  man  to  appreciate  with  discrimination  rather 
than  to  adore. 

It  might  be  of  interest  to  you  to  compare  the 
air  of  "  Lia  "  from  L'Enfant  Prodigue  with  the  ex- 
cerpt "  La  Lettre  "  from  the  opera  Pelleas.  These 
two  will  mark  for  you  most  readily  the  course  of 
his  muse's  flight. 

The  intermediate  period  between  these  two  pro- 
ductions is  highly  interesting  in  revealing  the  in- 
fluences that  made  Debussy's  art  what  we  find  it  at 
various  stages.  The  melodic  inspiration  is  not  re- 
markable, and  the  rhythmic  figures  are  few.  For 
example,  the  same  rhythmic  pattern  of  a  tremolo 
of  a  third  in  sixteenth  notes  is  used  in  "  II  pleure 
dans  mon  coeur"  and  in  the  Prelude  of  the  early 
group  of  pieces  called  "  Pour  le  Piano  "  —  composi- 
tions separated  by  many  years.  It  is  the  crafts- 
manship, the  French  finesse,  which  we  might  well 
emulate.  Instead  of  a  mass  of  sound  such  as  his 
foreign  contemporaries  used,  Debussy  chose  "sub- 
tlety of  harmonic  fluidity  with  translucent  orches- 
tration," as  Lawrence  Oilman  says  in  felicitous 
phrase. 


38  THE    RELATION    OF 

In  this,  passage  from  the  air  of  "  Lia  "  — 


si  les  jours  suivaient  les  jours, 


you  will  see  a  bit  of  the  Magic  Fire  music  by  Wag- 
ner and  an  unconscious  citation  from  the  G  minor 
concerto  of  Saint-Saens;  but  these  are  used  deli- 
cately, for  his  memory  had  as  light  a  touch  as  his 
imagination. 


Again,  in  some  of  his  songs  we  hear  an  echo  of 
Reynaldo  Hahn  and  of  Massenet.  He  belongs  to 
an  artificial  civilization  where  city  dwellers  sing 
the  joys  of  the  gason  fleuri  that  they  never  see,  and 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     39 


virtuous  sopranos  confide  in  French  to  an  audience 
of  rich  acquaintances  the  personal  experiences  that 
they  never  had  in  English.  Massenet's  "  Thais,"  in 
its  celebrated  Interlude  called  "  Meditation,"  is  close 
kindred  to  the  ending  of  "  Les  Cloches  "  by  Debussy, 
written  in  1891.  Their  mode  of  expression  at  that 
period  was  more  French  than  individual.  You  will 
also  find  in  "Green,"  written  by  Debussy  in  1913, 
over  twenty  years  later,  almost  a  replica  of  the  last 
vocal  phrase  in  the  Reynaldo  Hahn  song,  "  L'heure 
Exquise."  This  illustration  is  a  variant  of  it : 


m 


It  is  a  cliche  —  a  formula  —  usual  in  French  song, 
and  in  the  following  guise  is  a  common  ending  in 
American  songs : 


2CS3Z  C31 

• 

J    • 

IrvS  "  v  n     * 

?                        * 

\AJ          V      '4- 

4  •             l 

1 

9   .             3 

-g-: 

M\*    hi  t          Q 

F*   '                    l-t 

|£J«,    V  k  |_     »i 

£3    ' 

\-s  SfS,  7   A 

II 

The  French  idiom,  however  stereotyped,  is  employed 
more  exquisitely  than  our  own;  but  Debussy  was 
not  sufficiently  original  to  be  free  from  it.1 

1  Even  as  the  section  P/MJ  animt  of  Hahn's  song  "  Pay- 
sage  Triste  "  might  be  a  variation  on  the  theme  "  Malbrouck 
s'en  va-t-en  guerre,"  the  end  of  "  Romance "  by  Debussy  is 


40  THE    RELATION    OF 

Consider  the  words  of  French  songs  —  songs  by 
Hahn  or  by  Debussy  or  Faure.  You  will  find  such 
men  as  Verlaine,  Baudelaire,  Charles  Due  d'Orleans, 
and  Pierre  Louys  to  be  the  inspiration  of  modern 
French  song. 

Poetry,  not  for  its  intellectual  concepts  but  for  the 
music  indwelling  between  the  little  letters  as  the 
mind  attends,  will  make  the  songs  of  a  people. 

The  thought  of  the  community  makes  the  words 
in  the  people's  hearts.  The  language  of  a  country 
makes  its  song  writing.  Its  song  writing  develops 
into  its  operas.  Maeterlinck's  mind  was  trained  in 
scholastic,  classical  and  mystical  tradition,  and  he 
wrote  the  book  of  "  Pelleas  and  Melisande."  Its 
beauty  and  literary  quality  found  their  response  in 
the  heart  of  Debussy,  and  the  opera  was  born. 
Musically  one  of  the  strongest  characteristics  of  this 
opera  is  that  it  is  written  entirely  as  a  recitative. 
The  words  make  the  rhythm;  not  only  the  little 
rhythmic  patterns,  but  the  flow.  Other  men  in 
France  had  written  whole  songs  in  recitative,  but 
Pelleas  is  the  only  opera  ever  written  entirely  in 
this  form.  If  in  Debussy's  Clair  de  Lune  you  hear 
a  reminder  of  the  Rhine  maidens,  he  may  owe  a 
debt  of  gratitude  for  Pelleas  to  Wagner's  pioneer 
work  in  breaking  a  path  for  opera  in  free  form. 
Why  do  we  talk  of  Free  Form?  Has  any  historic 
artist  ever  used  the  forms  of  his  predecessors  as 
they  came  to  his  hand?  I  wonder  if  the  spirit  of 
art  is  ever  obliging  enough  to  conform  to  a  previ- 
ously made  mould  without  being  coerced  by  a  pre- 

near  kindred  to  the  end  of  "  Sourdine  "  by  Hahn.    As  Hahn 
drew  from  folk-song,  Debussy  drew  from  Hahn. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     41 

conceived   idea  of   limitation  on  the   part  of   the 
artist. 

We  speculate  sometimes  as  to  the  enduring  quality 
of  Claude  Debussy.  Laloy  may  help  us  to  formulate 
an  opinion.  "  Do  you  really  believe  in  the  immo- 
bility of  works  of  art?  Those  that  seem  everlasting, 
are  they  not  just  dried  flowers  of  an  herbarium? 
Have  they  not  been  subjected  to  a  sort  of  steriliza- 
tion to  brave  the  test  of  the  centuries,  and  do  you 
not  think  that  their  real  perfume  as  living  flowers 
is  practically  unknown  to  us?  There  is  a  mys- 
terious instant  when  creation  —  realization  —  of  art 
responds  exactly  to  the  aspirations  of  a  people  or  a 
time."  Laloy  goes  on  to  say :  "  For  the  first  time  per- 
haps, in  its  hunt  for  genius,  man  has  discovered  one 
in  full  vigour  of  his  youth  and  captured  him  alive. 
For  the  first  time  poor  humanity  —  that  always  gets 
up  too  late!  —  has  lost  nothing  of  that  elfin  moment 
when  the  sun  rises.  Let  the  conscience  of  our  time 
be  at  rest :  it  has  not  committed  the  sin  of  waiting 
too  long  to  thank  the  gods  for  Claude  Debussy." 
It  would  perhaps  be  ungracious  to  call  to  mind  those 
whom  the  world  has  acclaimed  in  their  little  hour. 
Let  us  hear  what  else  this  eulogist  in  an  excellent 
French  magazine  has  to  say  of  the  musical  hero  of 
the  day :  "  He  came  at  the  precise  moment  when  the 
evolution  of  painting  and  of  literary  schools  ren- 
dered intelligible  to  the  French  sensibilities  his 
subtle  discourse."  Ah,  that  is  just  the  point!  If 
the  creative  artist  be  not  in  his  time  in  advance  of 
the  sensibilities  of  his  people,  they  will  all  too  soon 
be  in  advance  of  him.  The  artist  must  carry  the 
torch. 


42  THE    RELATION    OF 

There  is  musical  content  and  there  is  musical 
manner.  The  content  varies  but  little  throughout 
the  centuries,  save  when  a  new  era  sets  in ;  but  man- 
ner changes  with  the  decade.  Salon  music,  music 
that  is  very  lovely  but  in  essence  neither  high  nor 
deep,  meets  in  all  periods  with  instant  approval  but 
is  of  brief  duration  in  the  minds  of  men.  If  in  such 
compositions  as  La  Puerta  del  Vino  and  Mandoline 
Debussy  had  possessed  a  wider  vision,  it  would  have 
lent  variety  to  the  rhythms  employed.1  The  stringed 
instruments  have  always  been  entertaining  as  a  sub- 
ject of  imitation  by  the  piano.  The  vocal  line  is 
not  especially  distinguished  in  Mandoline,  and  as  a 
composition  it  is  not  better  than  the  Moszkowski 
Guitarre  if  you  judge  them  by  the  historic  esti- 
mate, as  Matthew  Arnold  would  say,  taking  into 
consideration  the  twenty  years  intervening.  In  that 
Prelude  from  the  second  volume,  called  La  Puerta 
del  Vino,  Debussy  gives  us  a  Habanera  that  is  charm- 
ing because  of  its  enharmonic  changes,  its  pianistic 
devices  for  tone  colour,  its  persistent  guitar  accom- 
paniment. It  is  an  instance  of  the  witchery  that  is 
due  to  his  skill.  But  in  the  matter  of  rhythm  the 
Russians  have  outdone  the  French.  Ravel  has  used 
accents  with  inspired  irregularity,  but  what  I  would 
like  to  call  harmonies  of  rhythm  belong  rather  to 
Stravinski  and  Scriabin.  Believe  me,  I  am  not  de- 
crying Debussy,  neither  do  I  wish  to  detract  from 
his  just  fame ;  but  the  haystack  of  modern  music  is 
large,  and  in  finding  Debussy  as  we  set  out  to  do, 
we  must  inevitably  come  across  many  other  glisten- 

1  Cf.  Ravel,  Alborado  del  Grazioso. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     43 

ing  needles.  Debussy  is  not,  after  all,  "toute  la 
musique,"  as  one  reviewer  claims. 

In  a  memorable  lecture  by  Annie  Besant  in  Lon- 
don there  occurred  the  observation  that  the  prophet 
who  told  the  world  what  it  already  knew,  in  more 
beautiful  language  than  it  was  accustomed  to,  was 
crowned  with  laurels;  while  the  prophet  who  told 
the  world  what  it  did  not  know,  was  stoned.  A 
lesser  mystic  and  a  less  eloquent  speaker,  though  a 
remarkable  person,  Cyril  Scott,  in  his  book,  "The 
Philosophy  of  Modernism  in  Music,"  has  referred 
to  the  instant  appeal  made  by  mediocrity.  It  is  true 
that  mediocrity  does  not  offend.  It  is  something 
that  we  understand.  If  it  be  agreeably  presented, 
we  are  flattered  at  having  understood  something 
beautiful.  Whereas  genius,  or  the  result  of  re- 
ceptivity to  the  creative  rather  than  the  generative 
spirit,  often  repels  us  because  our  pride  is  hurt  at 
finding  ourselves  unequal  to  the  task  of  instant  com- 
prehension. It  would  be  assuming  too  much  to 
accuse  Debussy  of  mediocrity  as  a  creative  artist. 
Nevertheless,  in  the  life  pathos  of  Moussorgski  and 
the  spiritual  exaltation  of  Scriabin,  both  of  whom 
are  on  principle  bare  of  ornamentation,  almost 
bleak  in  their  austerity,  something  was  created  in 
music.  Debussy  invented  a  new  and  charming  man- 
ner, eminently  French,  in  which  he  told  us  what  we 
had  known  before.  We  had  only  to  accustom  our- 
selves to  his  language.  He  did  not  speak  as  a 
prophet. 

In  the  transition  from  the  nineteenth  to  the  twen- 
tieth century,  Debussy  represents  mentally  the  end 
of  the  earlier  period  and  technically  the  beginning 


44  THE    RELATION    OF 

of  the  new.  He  had  not  the  frank  realism  of  his 
Germanic  rival  Strauss,  nor  was  he  an  emancipated 
spirit  like  his  Russian  contemporary  Scriabin.  He 
had  not  the  depth  of  feeling  of  Moussorgski  in 
songs,  or  the  fundamental  novelty  and  mystical 
quality  of  Scriabin  or  Stravinski.  He  is  the  mental 
sensualist  that  France  was  at  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury. But  Laloy  says  still  more,  and  here  we  can 
agree  with  him  heartily:  "With  Debussy,  Spring 
came  into  the  music  of  France.  All  the  doors  of 
harmony  opened  into  gardens.  It  was  an  enchant- 
ment. Music  had  acquired  a  new  smile,  —  she  had 
discovered  the  Fountain  of  Youth." 

Without  melodic  invention,  devoid  of  rhythmic 
novelty,  and  with  no  great  dramatic  sense,  Debussy 
was  the  means  of  opening  our  hearts  to  those  others 
who  have  since  come  and  those  who  may  come ;  for 
he  told  the  news  with  a  simplicity  that  could  be 
understood.  Seed  from  everywhere  in  Europe  was 
blown  across  the  garden  of  his  mind.  And  over 
the  flowers  that  have  sprung  up  there,  lies  the  white 
mist  of  Dawn:  THE  DAWN  OF  A  NEW  BEAUTY  IN 
MUSIC. 

It  is  not  to  his  discredit  that  he  did  not  make  the 
Dawn,  as  some  of  his  overenthusiastic  literary 
friends  have  claimed.  It  is  greatly  to  his  credit  that 
he  did  not  face  the  Sunset,  either  as  a  youth,  when 
there  was  a  prize  to  be  won,  or  later  when,  as  Yeats 
has  said,  one  is  more  concerned  with  the  fruits  than 
the  flowers. 

Debussy  had  a  great  gift  and  responsibility  in  his 
sense  of  emancipation  for  music,  which,  had  he  been 
born  ten  years  later,  he  might  more  completely  have 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     45 

fulfilled.  He  had  the  requisite  scholarship.  He 
seems  to  me  a  la  fin  des  fins,  a  spirit  freed,  that 
chooses  only  to  linger  in  moonlit  courtyards  enjoy- 
ing vicariously  the  scenes  of  lovers'  meetings:  an 
aesthetic  soul  content  with  shadows,  not  bravely  ad- 
vancing like  Scriabin,  nor  returning  like  Moussorg- 
ski  to  view  sorrow  with  compassion. 

Being  exploited  by  publishers  and  teachers,  De- 
bussy is  given  an  importance  in  the  modern  musical 
world  that  might  well  be  diffused.  Ravel  is  his 
superior  in  ensemble  writing;  the  Russians  excel 
him  in  poignancy  of  expression  in  their  songs.  The 
young  Englishmen  have  more  vigour.  The  ten 
Sonatas  of  Scriabin  cause  one  to  wonder  what  great 
or  deep  impression  was  left  by  Debussy  on  the 
highway  of  pianoforte  literature.  The  orchestral 
works  of  Delius,  the  operas  of  Moussorgski,  the 
Symphonies  of  Scriabin,  may  perhaps  be  greater 
monuments  to  the  creative  genius  of  our  time  than 
the  largest  forms  of  composition  that  Debussy  has 
left.  His  lasting  value  will,  it  seems  to  me,  lie  in 
the  fact  of  his  being  a  pioneer  in  the  household 
trail  leading  away  from  the  German  music  previ- 
ously exploited ;  and  the  creative  imagination  of  the 
English-speaking  countries,  at  least,  will  take  the 
path  that  he  has  indicated  rather  than  the  one  pre- 
viously well  traveled,  because  of  the  unconscious 
memory  of  sister's  singing  and  the  grand  piano  at 
home. 


46  THE    RELATION    OF 


RHYTHM 

RIYTHM  is  in  the  year  and  its  seasons  recur- 
rently flowing.  Time  is  their  marking  off  into 
days  and  hours.  Calendars  change,  but  the  silent 
procession  of  the  seasons  goes  on,  regardless  of 
man's  reckoning.  Was  ever  the  Equinox  changed 
by  Gregory  or  Julian  ?  Does  Spring  hop  into  Sum- 
mer on  a  given  day  with  an  "accent"?  Let  flow 
our  music  as  the  seasons  flow. 

You  feel  that  you  want  an  "accent"  on  the  first 
beat?  Very  well,  what  kind?  What  is  the  "first 
beat"?  Perhaps  one  might  call  it  an  appearance. 
Let  us  say  the  dancer  leaps  from  off-stage  and  lands 
on  the  scene  upon  that  first  beat.  Does  he  stand 
there,  or  land  there  with  a  bang  ?  He  appears  in  an 
unbroken  flight  from  non-appearance  —  there  could 
not  be  a  cut  in  the  rhythm  or  the  time  before  his 
landing.  And  the  end  of  that  leap  is  a  beginning. 
This  involves  elasticity,  a  rebound  to  the  next  thing 
and  the  next  and  the  next.  That  continuous  motion 
is  a  manifestation  of  Rhythm.  It  is  not  monotonous 
or  fatiguing  to  muscle  or  to  sense,  because  it  is  re- 
silient: alternate  expansion  and  contraction,  alter- 
nate action  and  passivity.  Yet  it  is  not  fifty  per  cent 
action  and  fifty  per  cent  passivity;  rather  would  I 
say  it  is  ninety-nine  per  cent  the  passive  alertness  of 
the  wild  animal,  and  one  per  cent  lithe  spring.  The 
spring  must  be  to  passive  alertness  again. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     47 

Then,  suppose  you  are  a  dancer  already  on  the 
scene,  a  musician  in  the  midst  of  the  composition. 
Your  accent  on  the  first  beat  may  not  be  the  end  of 
a  leap,  in  that  case.  Try  an  agogic  accent  —  a 
pathetic  accent  —  a  quantitative  accent,  at  the  top  or 
the  bottom  or  the  middle  of  things.  You  have  run 
up  —  wait  a  bit;  you  have  gone  down  —  stop  to 
turn  round ;  you  have  come  to  a  middle  —  give  us  an 
instant's  time  to  realize  it  is  the  middle.  The  Rus- 
sian opera  accents  its  star  by  isolation;  from  the 
topmost  balcony  the  star  is  visible.  That  is  because 
a  little  space  is  left  all  round  the  star.  It  is  a 
beautiful  form  of  accentuation.  It  is  like  a  deep 
breath  on  the  first  day  of  Spring. 

The  great  cosmic  stream  as  it  courses  through 
the  arts  is  called  Rhythm.  The  channels  by  means 
of  which  it  flows  we  call  rhythms,  and  the  meas- 
urement of  those  moulds  that  take  the  flow  we  call 
meter.  In  one  brief  lecture  there  must  of  necessity 
be  a  very  limited  survey  of  these,  and  my  only  wish 
is  to  lead  you  to  discover  metrical  forms  for  your- 
selves. Let  them  not  become  stagnant  basins,  but 
remain  open  conduits  for  the  unbroken  flow  of 
Rhythm.  To  measure  Rhythm  by  its  mould  would 
be  to  confound  the  life  of  a  man  with  his  stature. 

I  understand,  not  from  books  but  from  what  is 
called  direct  instruction,  given  to  one  of  my  friends, 
that  Rhythm  is  not  mathematical  any  more  than  all 
law  is  mathematical,  but  is  manifested  on  the  earth 
plane  as  mathematical  in  order  to  be  conceivable. 
Vibration,  I  am  told,  is  only  another  earth-explana- 
tion and  not  Rhythm  itself,  for  Rhythm  is  a  Law. 

Let  us  begin  then  by  conceiving  Rhythm  as  a 


48  THE    RELATION    OF 

law  —  a  law  of  motion.  We  might  assume  that  the 
movement  is  spiral,  because  we  know  from  experi- 
ence that  we  return,  not  to  the  same  spot,  but  to  one 
analogous.  It  seems  to  me  always  that  I  return 
lifted  above  the  spot  that  the  present  one  resembles ; 
that  I  am  not  in  the  old  place  but  can  look  down 
upon  it  and  relate  it  to  the  enriched  experience  of 
the  present.  This  movement,  which  may  be  at  its 
center  merely  static  or  potential  energy,  manifests 
to  us  as  vibration;  simple,  and  by  degrees  infinitely 
complex;  and  the  greatest  complexity  here  (corre- 
sponding to  our  number  7,  the  largest  integral  unit) 
is,  I  am  told,  the  i  or  beginning  on  the  next  plane 
of  consciousness.  That  subtle  motion  of  our  being 
represented  by  the  number  7  produces  a  sensitized 
condition  which  we  know  as  perfect  love  in  its 
highest  aspect.  This  has  little,  I  suppose,  of  what 
is  called  practical  value  for  music  students ;  but  be- 
fore leaving  this  phase  of  the  subject  let  me  show 
you  what  was  written  by  the  scientist,  mystic  and 
musician,  Alexander  Scriabin,  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  in  Europe : 

"The  history  of  races  is  the  expression  at  the 
periphery  of  the  development  of  a  central  idea, 
which  comes  to  the  meditating  prophet  and  is  felt  by 
the  creative  artist,  but  is  completely  hidden  from  the 
masses.  The  development  of  this  idea  is  dependent 
upon  the  Rhythm  of  the  individual  attainments,  and 
the  periodic  accumulation  of  creative  energy  acting 
at  the  periphery,  produces  the  upheavals  whereby 
the  evolutionary  movement  of  races  is  accomplished. 
These  upheavals  (cataclysms,  catastrophes,  wars, 
revolutions,  etc.),  in  shaking  the  souls  of  men,  open 


ULTRAMODERN    TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     49 

them  to  the  reception  of  the  idea  hidden  behind  the 
outward  happenings." 

The  "  Rhythm  of  individual  attainment "  is  some- 
thing to  be  pondered  by  the  individual.  To  cast 
aside  the  superficial  activities  of  the  mind  which 
make  him  appear  to  the  seeing  observer  like  a  little 
cork  bobbing  about  on  top  of  the  water,  —  this  is 
the  first  thing.  In  the  repose  and  peace  of  his  own 
soul  each  individual  must  find  his  essential  being, 
his  enduring  and  individual  self ;  and  this  will  swing 
into  its  own  harmonious  rhythm  in  the  great  cosmic 
movement,  affecting  necessarily  all  lesser  and  tran- 
sitory matters. 

In  each  art  Rhythm  presents  a  different  mani- 
festation. May  I  show  you  two  charts,  two  studies 
in  Rhythm  of  design  made  by  a  student  under  Mr. 
George  Hamilton  at  the  Detroit  School  of  Design? 
Remember,  Rhythm  is  to  our  sense  a  progress. 
You  musicians  have,  I  hope,  during  the  past  few 
minutes  been  released  from  the  idea  that  Rhythm  is 
the  recurrent  metrical  beat,  so  many  to  a  minute. 
Our  measurement  of  time  must  be  all  wrong;  it 
doesn't  match  the  facts  of  nature.  This  morning 
the  sun  rose  at  seven  by  your  watch.  Your  watch 
keeps  perfect  time.  But  does  the  sun  rise  at  seven 
by  your  watch  tomorrow  ?  Not  at  all ;  it  has  made 
an  accellerando  and  rises  at  six  fifty-six.  What!  is 
the  sun  irregular  ?  Ah,  no !  it  has  a  Rhythm  through 
the  years;  and  on  its  own  good  day  it  rises  again 
when  your  watch  marks  seven.  The  watch  had  no 
life;  it  was  but  a  puppet  that  had  to  stand  in  one 
spot  and  jerk  its  little  arms  until  the  planets  came 
home  from  their  long  journey.  Poor  little  clock, 


50  THE    RELATION    OF 

made  by  man!  Would  you  have  your  music  com- 
port with  the  clock,  or  be  one  with  the  motion  of 
the  stars? 

This  first  chart  is  an  exposition  of  Rhythm  in 
several  aspects  relative  to  design,  —  Rhythm  of 
value,  of  direction,  of  measure,  of  interval,  of  form. 
In  this  connection  we  are  using  eight  line  elements 
and  dealing  with  them  rhythmically.  When  we  em- 
ploy these  line  elements  for  Rhythm  of  measure, 
then  Rhythm  is  designedly  lacking  in  value,  direction, 
interval  and  form.  We  have  isolated  the  one  factor 
of  measure  in  which  to  demonstrate  Rhythm.  So 
in  isolating  value  (intensity),  that  alone  of  all  the 
possibilities  for  Rhythm  in  the  pattern  will  be  em- 
ployed rhythmically.  So  with  each  of  the  five.  In 
the  small  design  at  the  side  of  the  chart,  Rhythm  is 
used  in  all,  —  in  value,  in  direction,  measure,  inter- 
val and  form.  All  these  factors  working  together 
without  a  picture  in  mind,  serve  of  themselves  to 
suggest  a  pictorial  design.  (Chart  I.) 

In  the  second  chart,  which  uses  beside  these 
factors  another  element  called  hidden  balance  or 
occult  balance,  those  same  line  elements  with  which 
we  began  have  evolved  into  a  design  that  we  would 
say  had  beauty.  (Chart  2.) 

In  a  third  chart,  an  evolution  of  the  previous 
ones,  the  flowing  rhythms  of  various  factors  in  de- 
sign served  to  produce  a  real  picture;  for  through 
the  activity  of  the  imagination  Rhythm  called  into 
being  forms  that  were  harmonious.  It  would  have 
been  a  very  difficult  thing  to  draw  those  several 
forms  in  the  picture  without  their  clashing  rhythmi- 
cally. As  it  is,  the  shallow  curve  of  the  arm  in 


DC 
U 


z 

s 

<o 

m 

Q 

L 

O 

HI 

CO  Q 
HJ  3 


a 

U 

z 

•DC 

a 


I 
U 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     53 


a  figure  at  the  right  becomes  by  progressive  de- 
grees the  double  curve  of  a  kneeling  figure  at  the 
left:  Rhythm  of  form.  You  will  find  this  same 
kind  of  development  in  Chopin  and  in  Scriabin. 
I  cannot  at  present  find  it  consistent  with  the 
classic  tradition  in  music,  which  overemphasizes 
the  rhythmic  element  known  in  the  art  of  design 
as  "  harmony,"  but  which  we  would  call  identity. 

The  rhythmic  factor  known  in  design  as  "har- 
mony "  is  used  very  beautifully  in  Chopin's  prelude 
in  F  sharp  minor. 


/    X 


An  octave  leap  /* 

A  short  interval  —  northeast 
A  short  interval  —  southeast 

An  octave  leap  f 


\ 


making 


One  might  embroider  that  prelude.     The  pattern 
varies  but  it  never  changes. 

In  music  there  are  vibrational  and  numerical  pat- 
terns through  which  Rhythm  flows.  These  are  not 
necessarily  in  twos  and  threes.  I  will  show  you 
presently  some  very  pretty  patterns ;  but  first  I  want 


54  THE    RELATION    OF 

to  talk  to  you  a  moment  about  those  five  aspects  of 
Rhythm  itself  in  terms  of  the  art  of  design.  The 
nomenclature  is  very  similar  to  that  in  music. 
Value,  Direction,  Measure,  Interval,  Form:  V,  D, 
M,  I,  F. 

V,  Value,  equals  intensity  or  strength;  D,  Direc- 
tion, too  rarely  considered  as  musical  Rhythm; 
M,  Measure,  length  of  the  pattern.  In  music  the 
same  term  might  be  used.  The  repeated  four-bar 
phrase  lacks  this  element  of  Rhythm,  unless  direc- 
tion is  a  natural  outpouring,  as,  for  example,  in  the 
case  of  Chopin.  Without  direction  the  four-bar 
phrase  lacks  flow  and  life,  or  the  sense  of  continuity. 
I,  Interval,  equals  spacing;  that  is,  ritenuto  or  accel- 
lerando :  space  between  tones.1  It  may  be  such  aural 
space,  or  it  may  be  a  Rhythm  of  what  we  would  call 
in  music  "  Interval."  There  are  fine  examples  of 
the  aural  spacing,  the  thing  that  would  be  called  in 
design  Interval,  at  the  end  of  the  lesser  works  of 
Brahms  and  of  MacDowell.  I  do  not  mean  the 
doubling  or  halving  of  note  durations  which  we  call 
expansion  or  contraction;  I  mean  the  gradual  mo- 
tion that  the  composer  hopes  for  when  he  writes 
accellerando  or  ritenuto.  F,  Form,  equals  the  musi- 
cal pattern  itself.  Not  "  form  "  as  we  know  it  in 
music,  which  in  design  would  be  called  "composi- 
tion," but  a  musical  figure  or  pattern. 

As  you  saw  in  the  illustrations,  any  one  of  these 
factors  of  Rhythm  may  be  present  to  the  exclusion 
of  the  others.  If  all  are  present  there  is  grace  and 
flow  of  a  perfect  manifestation  of  the  art-concept. 

1  Cf.  p.  54,  Noh,  by  Fenollosa-Pound,  published  by  Knopf, 
1918. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     55 

In  a  book  by  Lawrence  Binyon  called  "  The  Flight 
of  the  Dragon,"  the  six  canons  of  Chinese  art  are 
quoted  which  were  formulated  in  the  sixth  century 
by  Hsieh  Ho.  Of  these  the  first  canon  is  Rhythmic 
Vitality.  Aside  from  his  footnotes  of  elucidation 
Mr.  Binyon  generously  gives  us  further  explanation 
on  a  succeeding  page : 

"The  first  of  these  canons  is  the  all-important 
one;  for  the  others  are  concerned  rather  with  the 
means  to  attain  the  end  which  the  first  defines. 
'  Rhythmic  Vitality '  is  Professor  Giles's  translation ; 
but,  though  terse  and  convenient,  it  does  not  seem 
quite  to  cover  the  full  meaning  of  the  original 
phrase.  Mr.  Okakura1  renders  it,  'The  Life-move- 
ment of  the  Spirit  through  the  Rhythm  of  things ' ; 
or,  again,  one  might  translate  it,  *  The  fusion  of  the 
rhythm  of  the  spirit  with  the  movement  of  living 
things.' 

"  At  any  rate,  what  is  certainly  meant  is  that  the 
artist  must  pierce  beneath  the  mere  aspect  of  the 
world  to  seize  and  himself  to  be  possessed  by  that 
great  cosmic  rhythm  of  the  spirit  which  sets  the 
currents  of  life  in  motion." 

At  the  Anthroposophical  center  at  Dornach  near 
Basle,  a  school  of  Christian  mysticism,  Rudolph 
Steiner  is  said  to  have  evolved  rhythmic  dances  to 
the  vowels.  Jaques  Dalcroze  has  made  a  really 
exhaustive  study  of  the  subject  of  Rhythm  with 
regard  to  the  clear  mental  image  attained  through 
bodily  movements.  This  of  course  would  go  into 
the  field  of  the  plastic  arts,  though  originating  in 

1  A  most  distinguished  art-connoisseur  of  Japan. 


56  THE    RELATION    OF 

music,  and  has  in  some  instances  led  to  painting 
as  the  chosen  pursuit  of  his  students.  If  Rhythm 
were  the  mensural  beat,  how  would  painting  have 
rhythm?  I  have  read  that  the  arts  of  repose,  the 
plastic  arts,  present  symmetry  in  a  higher  degree 
than  music  because  they  alone  persist  in  space  and 
endure  long  contemplation.  But  in  dealing  with 
essences  and  not  images,  the  factor  of  temporal 
duration  is  eliminated.  The  essence  is  outside  that 
realm,  and  no  less  a  person  than  Plutarch  writes  that 
the  Pythagorean  number  according  to  which  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  original  Essence  or  world-soul 
occurs,  is  connected  with  a  certain  arrangement  of 
tones  in  the  octave.  The  theory  of  such  correspond- 
ence is  that  by  the  distribution  of  the  original 
Essence  all  things  are  related  in  that  Essence,  and 
thus  have  correspondences  according  to  various 
aspects  represented.  On  a  familiar  plane  it  is  like 
the  rattling  of  a  picture  frame  somewhere  in  the 
room  when  a  certain  note  is  struck  on  the  piano. 
These  would  be  related  in  vibration;  and  this  is  a 
true  analogy,  for  vibration,  we  were  told,  was  an 
"  earth  explanation  "  of  Rhythm,  which  was  a  Law. 

Rhythm  is  not  periodicity,  but  Rhythm  has  perio- 
dicity. In  a  manuscript  by  J.  Landseer  Mackenzie 
occur  the  following  statements :  "  Rhythm  is  a  law 
which  governs  and  works  through  the  senses. 
Rhythm  is  the  law  that  connects  feeling  and 
idea." 

Now  for  the  pretty  patterns  in  music  that  we  call 
rhythms.  A  rhythm  of  fives  is  interesting:  there 
are  many  arrangements.  Arenski  used  a  simple 
form  in  his  concerto,  Opus  2. 


ULTRAMODERN    TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     57 


^rrcrcJirg^ 


-I 


Later,  in  Opus  28,  he  made  experiments  in  the 
rhythms  of  ancient  Persian,  Greek  and  Roman 
poetry  which  he  called  Experiments  in  Forgotten 
Rhythms.  Of  these  I  would  like  to  show  you  the 
one  in  a  rhythm  of  five.  It  is  called  Peons  —  and 
that  has  neither  to  do  with  the  slaves  in  Mexico, 
I  hasten  to  add,  being  frequently  asked,  nor  with 
the  French  word  for  peacock.  It  has  rather  to  do 
with  punch  and  the  Pentateuch;  for  just  as  the 
Pentateuch  has  five  books,  Punch  is  borrowed  from 
the  Persian  word  that  indicates  the  five  ingredients 
in  the  beverage.  So  Peons  is  the  French  word  for 
this  rhythm  of  five,  and  Arenski  has  used  the  Cretic 
form. 


fo-ft-J  -1  J  J 

=f  -1'  ESE  r 

"^^    *i 

h  

r^~r  ^  ^ 

^                    K      "T 

—  0  f.  —  i  — 

-*- 

U  

/5»Y  r       J              r 

V                      N       1 

E 

(B^    ^  —  M  —  J  —  J 

-i-^  ih-H- 

2  =i— 

Scriabin,  in  Opus  67,  has  used  five  as  an  integral 
beat,  which  is  rare. 


58 


THE   RELATION    OF 


Albeniz  in  a  little  piece  called  Zortzico  has  broken 
up  the  five  beats  in  a  charming  Spanish  fashion. 


In  a  book  by  Scale  (published  in  London,  1823), 
there  is  this  analysis  of  Greek  meters  of  five : 

Paeon  primus  _  w  v  w 
Paeon  secundus  w  _  w  w 
Paeon  tertius  w  w  _  w 
Paeon  quartus  w  w  w  _ 

Then,  too,  Rhythm  can  swing  through  one  form 
after  another  freely,  as  our  modern  music  and  the 
uninfluenced  folk  music  of  certain  races  allow  it 
to  do.1 

The  free  rhythm  of  church  composers  assumed 
a  definite  shape  when  music  had  to  be  fitted  to 

1  See  v.  Hornbostel's  records  from  the  island  of  Nissan, 
quoted  by  Stumpf,  "  Die  Anfange  der  Musik."  Published  by 
Earth,  Leipzig. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     59 

metrical  lines  instead  of  Latin  prose :  meter  instead 
of  quantity.  Even  the  Gregorian  music  being  pre- 
sented in  the  Western  Catholic  cathedrals  at  the 
present  time  has  a  hidden  metrical  pulsation  when 
the  Latin  words  are  rhymed. 

Among  the  Troubadours,  coming  late  as  they 
did,  1150  to  1300,  with  their  Latin-French,  three 
rhythms  alone  were  used :  iambic,  ^  — ,  trochaic, 
_  w,  and  the  dactyl,  _  w  w.  If  your  memory  has 
confused  these,  they  can  readily  be  illustrated  by 
Hello  Frisco,  The  Merry  Widow  Waltz  and  the 
old  tune  called  "  Long,  Long  Ago." 

Our  own  English  language  and  the  German,  to 
which  it  largely  owes  its  origin  and  its  songs,  have 
had  a  devastating  influence  on  Rhythm.  The  poeti- 
cal meters,  aided  by  the  cudgel  of  the  end-rhyme, 
drove  the  music  into  little  squares.  The  sole  alter- 
native to  the  little  square  was  the  little  skip  or  hop. 
So  what  we  generally  know  as  folk-song  is  in  a 
naturalistic  and  mimetic  meter  made  in  sympathy 
with  a  bodily  swaying  of  extreme  joy  or  grief,  or 
the  motion  of  a  cradle  or  the  imitation  of  a  horse's 
gallop.  This  is  the  human-emotional  element,  the 
forerunner  of  the  mensural  beat  or  the  limited  thing 
that  we  used  to  call  Rhythm.  Now  to  correlate  all 
of  this,  one  might  suggest  that  as  folk-song  rep- 
resents physical  rhythm,  so  folk-thought  represents 
physical  well-being;  and  that  welfare  beyond  the 
physical  comes  as  inspiration  to  the  individual 
known  as  the  seer,  whether  he  be  saint  or  artist. 
This  is  the  reason  it  has  been  said  that  the  saint  and 
artist  are  one  in  essence,  like  mirrors  held  in  the 
right  and  left  hand,  reflecting  divinity.  In  Occidental 


60  THE    RELATION    OF 

folk-song,  thesis  and  accent  almost  invariably  coin- 
cide, and  this  makes  a  jolt,  a  bump,  an  impediment 
if  you  will,  that  is  fairly  representative  of  the  inter- 
rupted flow  of  the  great  Rhythm  of  Life.  For  most 
of  the  folk-song  we  know  has  to  do  with  battle, 
poison,  death  or  lovers'  quarrels ;  and  if  it  is  a  really 
grand  example,  it  has  to  do  with  all  four. 

One  salient  parallel  between  ultramodern  and 
archaic  music  is  noticeable  in  American  ragtime. 
Thesis  and  accent  do  not  coincide.  The  intensely 
interesting  dynamic  and  quantitative  accents  of  rag- 
time are  at  variance  with  all  north-European  tradi- 
tion. If  as  Kawczinski  says,  the  lively  and  rapid 
rhythms  of  our  dance  have  rendered  false  our  idea 
of  rhythm,  it  is  poetic  justice  that  through  our  more 
modern  dance  of  the  sophisticated  interpretative 
school  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  primitive  elisions, 
syncopations  and  anticipations!  of  vulgar  custom  on 
the  other,  we  are  recovering  the  lost  idea  of  Rhythm 
as  an  unending  flow.  The  body  is  once  again,  as 
among  primitive  peoples,  a  subtle  vehicle  of  energy. 

One  reason  for  the  popularity  of  Debussy  among 
professionals  is  his  rhythmic  simplicity.  By  the 
same  token,  it  will  be  a  long  time  before  Scriabin 
becomes  popular  in  the  same  sense.  The  songs  of 
Debussy  look  complicated,  but  are  founded  strictly 
on  the  mensural  beat  of  binary  or  ternary  divisions 
that  are  as  simple  as  a  gas  heater.  They  require 
just  the  same  form  of  everyday  courage  in  ap- 
proaching them  boldly  to  light  them  up.  Debussy 
never  uses  an  archaic  rhythm,  to  my  knowledge, 
such  as  the  Irish  Rann,  which  is  one  of  the  rhythms 
of  seven.  An  example  of  this  rhythm  is  given  by 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     61 

a  distinguished  writer  as  possibly  the  first  Irish 
strophe  in  this  form.  It  is  easy  to  remember  be- 
cause it  is  in  a  rhythm  of  seven  dating  from  the 
seventh  century.  This  example  is  to  be  found  in 
"  1'Antiphonaire  de  Bangor,"  spelled  Benchuir  by 
the  Irish  family  for  whom  the  strophe  was  written : 

VERSICULI  FAMILIAE  BENCHUIR 

Benchuir  bona  regula, 
Recta  atque  divina, 
Stricta,  sancta,  sedula 
Summa,  justa,  ac  mira. 

You  will  find  this  ancient  rhythm  trailing  under- 
neath the  "Air  du  Grand  Prieur,"  written  for  the 
order  of  the  Rosicrucians  in  Paris  by  Erik  Satie,  a 
man  greatly  misunderstood. 

There  are  many  arrangements  of  seven  possible. 
Here  are  some  quoted  by  Scale  as  Greek  meters : 

Epitritus  primus  w 

Epitritus  secundus  __  w 

Epitritus  tertius w  _ 

Epitritus  quartus w 

And  there  are  seven  others,  less  in  use. 

Mrs.  Kennedy  Eraser  has  published  among  her 
Hebridean  folk-songs  this  lovely  milking  song  with 
the  little  double  beat  coming  in  fascinating  places : 


62 


THE   RELATION    OF 


An  early  work  by  Stcherbatcheff  is  called  a  Danc- 
ing Chorus,  and  employs  a  seven  that  has  its  double 
beat  on  two  and  four  in  one  bar  and  one  and  four 
in  the  next,  with  charming  effect.  The  piece  is  in 
a  rhythm  of  nine  not  divided  in  threes.  It  has 
phrases  in  a  rhythm  of  seven  moving  so  smoothly 
that  you  will  hardly  notice  the  variation  in  pattern. 
The  interesting  thing  about  this  particular  rhythm 
of  nine  is  its  division  into  i,  1-2,  1—2—3—4,  1—2.  In 
general  usage  the  first  of  two  is  a  down  beat.  Here 
it  is  an  up  beat,  at  the  same  time  an  accent:  the 
accent  on  the  anacrusis,  which  gives  continuity. 


So  long  as  rhythm  is  considered  dependent  on 
bodily  swaying  or  the  dance  or  any  physical  thing, 
it  is  no  wonder  that  the  poet  with  his  finer  sense 
of  rhythmic  values  assumes  superiority  over  the 
musician. 

Like  many  departures  from  the  recognized,  I  find 
our  ultramodern  music  sharply  divided  into  two 
orders :  on  the  one  hand  it  is  more  fundamentally 
true  than  the  music  of  the  immediate  past,  and  on 
the  other  hand  it  is  a  departure  from  the  recognized 
without  a  goal.  We  need  not  be  concerned  about 
this  latter  phase  of  music,  for  the  fungus  growth 
will  disappear  as  it  has  done  in  other  epochs. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     63 

In  a  review  of  twentieth-century  music  by  an  im- 
portant writer  for  the  Musical  Quarterly  it  was 
said  that  our  conditions  of  life  demand  an  entirely 
new  form  of  artistic  expression.  Is  art  then,  after 
all,  but  another  presentment  of  external,  ephemeral 
existence?  Conditions  of  life  have  little  to  do  with 
the  man  through  whom  art  comes  into  being  among 
us.  Kawczinski  has  written :  "  Every  invention  in 
art  or  science,  like  invention  in  general,  is  always 
individual  and  personal,  proceeding  from  a  mind 
superior  in  some  way  to  the  rest,  which  follow 
it.  The  national  idea,  that  the  inventor  is  only 
the  annunciator,  robs  that  superior  mind  of  the 
merit  of  his  vigils,  his  labors,  and  his  thought,  to 
divide  it  amongst  the  crowd  who  are  ignorant  of  the 
difficult  art  of  meditation."  This  brings  to  mind 
the  words  of  Goethe :  "  Es  bildet  ein  Talent  sich  in 
der  Stille,  sich  ein  Charakter  in  dem  Strom  der 
Welt."  You  remember  Claude  Bragdon's  words: 
"  This  is  the  essence  of  art,  first  to  perceive  and 
then  to  publish  news  from  that  nowhere  of  the  world 
from  which  all  things  flow,  and  to  which  all  things 
return."  And  even  Plato  observed  that  one  should 
note  which  rhythms  express  license,  pride,  madness 
or  other  evil.  For  the  good  of  the  state  Plato 
wished  music  in  this  regard  to  be  regulated  by  state 
authority.  I  would  like  to  tell  you  of  an  instance 
where  a  rhythm  had  power.  At  a  recital  at  a 
country  club  in  New  Jersey  I  played  the  Prelude 
by  Scriabin  that  bears  the  caption  "  Sauvage  —  belli- 
queux."  This  Prelude  is  made  in  a  rhythm  of 
ferocity  almost  mimetic  in  its  suggestion.  (Inci- 
dentally, if  that  piece  were  played  with  the  metro- 


64  THE    RELATION    OF 

nome  it  would  lose  entirely  its  rhythmic  value.) 
A  few  days  later,  two  little  children  in  the  town 
were  seen  crouching1,  and  with  a  sudden  sound  and 
violence  they  would  spring  dangerously  one  upon 
the  other.  A  passer-by  remonstrated :  "  Children, 
what  are  you  doing?"  "We  are  playing  savage 
and  warlike,"  they  said.  My  friend  remembered 
Plato  and  walked  on. 

According  to  Aristoxenus  and  Denys  d'Halicar- 
nasse,  as  quoted  by  Kawczinski,  the  Greek  accents 
ran  within  a  fifth,  and  the  musical  element  in  the 
pronunciation  of  Greek  formed  the  melody.  On  the 
authority  of  that  disciple  of  the  ancients  I  give  you 
this  rendering  of  the  first  line  of  the  Iliad : 1 


•^—  -  <*«^ 

Mfj-vw   ft  -  «-Se,0e  -  &,  IIjj-Xiji-  A-Se  -  u 


The  Chinese  say,  "  Prosody  is  the  image  of 
music."  In  other  words,  vowels  and  consonants 
would  be  chosen  with  regard  to  (  I  )  the  length  they 
measure  or  (2)  the  force  they  demand  or  (3)  the 
lift  they  give.  And  there  we  have  the  three  dimen- 
sions of  rhythm.  It  flows  lengthwise,  slowly  or 
rapidly.  Dynamic  stress  or  force  of  breath  cuts 
across  and  gives  the  second  dimension.  Rise  and 
fall  known  as  chromatic  stress  gives  the  third 
dimension.  So  Rhythm,  like  the  cosmos,  has  to 
our  senses  three  dimensions.  It  probably  has, 
however,  as  many  dimensions  as  we  are  able  to 
perceive.  Repeat  to  yourself  in  a  perfectly  even, 

1  Essai  sur  1'origine  et  1'histoire  des  Rhythmes  —  Maxi- 
milien  Kawczinski. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     65 

straight,  uninflected  line  this  phrase:  "If  I  should 
say  to  you  paintings  are  beautiful."  Now  merely 
in  the  flow  of  the  length  of  the  vowels,  without 
lifting  the  voice  up  or  down  and  without  accent 
by  force  of  breath,  there  is  rhythm.  Then  use 
the  second  dimension  of  Rhythm  by  cutting  across 
that  stream  with  force  of  breath,  which  we  call 
dynamic  accent,  and  say,  still  without  rise  or  fall, 
"  IF  I  should  SAY  to  you  pAiNtings  are  BEAutiful." 
There  you  have  two  dimensions  of  Rhythm.  Now 
try  the  third  by  leaving  your  voice  loose  and  free 
to  rise  or  fall  where  rhythmic  stress  spontaneously 
comes.  The  third,  according  to  Kawczinski,  is  the 
chromatic  accent  of  the  Greeks,  and  this  will  ex- 
plain to  you  the  first  line  of  the  Iliad  as  noted  above. 

Do  not  think  that  I  am  digressing  from  the  pur- 
pose of  this  Conference.  Melody  and  rhythm  are 
indissolubly  allied  when  Rhythm  is  considered  from 
this  standpoint,  and  much  in  ultramodern  music 
that  might  ordinarily  sound  tuneless  and  vague  to 
you  from  another  point  of  view  will  in  this  as- 
pect reveal  its  proper  meaning.  For  with  the  best 
of  the  moderns,  as  with  the  American  Indian,  "  the 
sense  of  interval  yields  to  the  need  of  utterance." 
Not  that  it  has  ever  failed  to  do  so  among  the  in- 
spired musicians.  It  is  the  uninspired  who  have  en- 
slaved musical  utterance,  and  frequently  during  the 
past  era  of  music,  a  stereotyped  form  deftly  handled 
has  given  undue  authority  to  a  composer  and  an 
unwarrantable  number  of  lifeless  copies  to  the  world. 

That  distinguished  dramatic  critic,  the  late 
Charles  Caffin,  told  me  that  when  he  heard  the  Rus- 
sian players  in  New  York  without  understanding 


66  THE    RELATION    OF 

their  language  he  was  fascinated  with  the  rhythm. 
One  actor  would  establish  a  rhythm  in  a  phrase,  toss 
it  to  another  actor  who  caught  it  and  changed  it  to 
his  mood  and  passed  it  on  to  another. 

The  countries  of  the  Romance  and  Slavic  lan- 
guages have  more  variety  in  the  rhythm  of  their 
music  because  of  the  greater  flexibility  of  the  native 
speech.  Did  you  ever  see  an  old  quilt  of  the  feather 
pattern?  It  is  made  by  creating  a  design  of  long 
flowing  lines  like  an  ostrich  plume  through  the  use 
of  little  fine  needle  stitches  all  in  white  like  the  cloth. 
A  fine  Marseilles  quilt  is  probably  a  machine-made 
reproduction  of  it.  The  same  relation  exists  be- 
tween a  child's  patchwork  quilt  and  this  flowing  free 
rhythm  that  a  composition  restrained  by  the  men- 
sural beat  bears  to  the  natural  or  rhapsodic  build  of 
music.  The  nibato  in  tempo  advocated  by  Ysaye 
is  a  free  equilibration  of  quantitative  values  within 
the  emotional  phrase.  It  is  the  too  general  and 
inartistic,  uncomprehending  training  in  the  tech- 
nique of  instruments,  and  the  commercial  dissemi- 
nation of  songs,  that  have  killed  this  perception  of 
the  true  declamation  of  the  phrase.  The  real  sin  is 
of  course  the  artificiality  of  the  phrase  itself.  Cer- 
tain composers  —  Bizet,  Liszt,  Chopin,  for  ex- 
ample, among  nineteenth-century  musicians — spoke 
as  bards  with  natural  magic  in  the  sequence.  Take 
almost  any  phrase  in  their  work  excepting  a  frank 
dance  measure,  and  if  you  outlined  the  mensural 
rhythm,  which  an  artist  never  does  unless  he  is 
scared,  it  would  be  like  drawing  a  black  border  round 
each  of  the  clouds  in  a  sunset. 

In   hearing  orchestral  music  that  is  not  dance 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     67 

music  it  is  hard  to  discover  the  metrical  shape.  It 
is  almost  purely  rhythmic  when  presented  by  a  good 
conductor.  Oriental  music,  as  you  would  imagine, 
is  not  metrical  at  all  in  our  sense,  save  where  it  is  a 
dance  measure.  A  Rice  Song  was  sung  for  me  in 
San  Francisco  by  a  Japanese  woman,  a  song  for 
planting  time.  You  will  see  in  it  some  of  the 
rhythmic  elements  of  design. 


YAMATO-MAI 


In  the  next  Conference  of  this  course,  Parallels 
between  Ultramodern  Music  and  Poetry,  perhaps 
you  will  feel  with  me  the  Eastern  trend  of  our  life 
and  art  in  the  twentieth  century.  In  this  connection 
I  must  tell  you  one  of  the  things  I  learned  from  a 
Sufi  philosopher  in  London :  the  five  ways  of  listen- 
ing to  music. 

The  first  is  the  common  or  vulgar  hearing,  as  rag- 
time. 

The  second  is  the  technical  hearing  —  how  it  is 
done. 

The  third  is  the  scientific  hearing  —  how  it  is 
made. 


68  THE   RELATION    OF 

The  fourth  is  the  emotional  hearing. 

The  fifth  is  the  mystical  hearing,  in  which  there  is 
loss  of  self,  as  in  prayer. 

What  music  that  you  know  is  so  perfect  that  you 
can  listen  to  it  in  each  of  those  five  ways?  Is  it 
necessary  to  put  up  with  second-class  art  ?  Why  dull 
our  senses  with'  things  that  we  have  to  condone? 
If  we  are  to  "standardize"  music,  let  us  first  have 
a  standard! 

Remembering,  then,  that  Rhythm  involves  not  so 
much  the  recurrent  beat  as  ( i )  the  recurrent  phrase, 
(2)  the  shape  and  (3)  direction  of  the  phrase, 
(4)  the  dynamic  value,  (5)  the  spacing  between 
tones,  and  (6)  the  related  accellerandi  and  ritenuti, 
let  me  recommend  to  you  a  new  examination  of  the 
old  music  you  love  best,  to  discover  hidden  beauty 
and  balance,  and  a  sympathetic  glance  at  the  new. 

Rhythm  and  time  seem  to  me  like  air  and  aether, 
occupying  to  our  senses  the  same  space.  A  charm- 
ing Irish  lady  calling  upon  me  in  London  talked  for 
a  while  about  my  concert.  Then  turning  to  me  shyly 
she  said,  "  Do  ye  now,  —  it 's  an  odd  thing  to  ask,  — 
but  do  ye  now  ever  have  any  trouble  with  what  we 
call  —  the  toime?" 

If  you  "have  trouble  with  the  toime"  buy  an 
automatic  noise  to  dance  to ;  and  when  you  take  up 
your  Nocturnes  or  your  Preludes  or  your  lovely 
songs,  your  Bach  or  your  Scriabin,  find  what  was 
the  curved  swing  of  the  phrase  that  kept  the  com- 
poser awake  till  he  wrote  it,  cursing  the  while,  you 
may  be  sure,  because  there  were  no  little  black  marks 
invented  that  could  tell  the  Philistine  just  how  long 
to  hold  a  tone.  Ah,  the  mould  must  not  be  distorted, 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     69 

—  surely  any  one  would  take  the  trouble  to  be  exact 
about  the  shaping  of  the  mould  through  which 
Rhythm  flows.  That  is  a  necessary  link  in  this 
chain,  for  these  are  the  stages  between  the  mind  of 
the  composer  and  the  mind  of  the  hearer ;  and  only 
by  means  of  these  stages  can  music  be  "  elevating  " : 

THE  DREAM  in  the  mind  of  the  composer. 

THE  RECORD. 

THE  PERCEPTION  of  the  dream  in  the  heart  of  the 

artist. 

THE  PRESENTATION. 
THE  COMPOSER'S  DREAM  in  the  mind  of  the  hearer. 

To  interpret  the  Dream  by  means  of  the  poor  meager 
record  is  to  connect  feeling  and  idea;  and  of  this 
connection  we  are  told  that  Rhythm  is  the  Law. 


70  THE    RELATION    OF 


PARALLELS 

BETWEEN  ULTRAMODERN  POETRY 
AND  ULTRAMODERN  MUSIC 

AS  the  previous  chapter  has  dealt  principally  with 
•*  *•  music  and  relatively  with  its  national  origins,  it 
may  be  well  to  note  certain  points  at  the  outset  of  this 
chapter  on  Parallels  Between  Ultramodern  Music 
and  Ultramodern  Poetry.  In  other  words,  we  wish 
to  launch  out  upon  this  subject  with  a  clear  under- 
standing of  what  is  new  in  this  era,  in  poetry  as  well 
as  in  music  and  in  their  alliance.  At  the  beginning 
of  this  century,  1902,  one  of  the  chief  textbooks 
used  in  the  schools  of  America  was  the  "  Handbook 
of  Poetics,"  by  Gummere.  It  had  then  been  out  for 
seventeen  years,  and  it  is  quoted  in  textbooks  used 
now  in  1920  at  our  universities  as  if  nothing  had 
happened  in  the  realm  of  poetics  in  thirty-five  years. 
In  the  preface  Mr.  Gummere  says,  "  This  handbook 
of  poetics  is  meant  to  aid  the  teacher  in  laying  so 
necessary  a  foundation,"  and  at  the  end  of  the 
preface  he  says,  "  Of  the  many  books  consulted, 
Wackernagel's  '  Lectures  on  Poetik '  and  the  works 
on  meter  by  Child,  Schipper,  Ellis  and  Ten  Brink 
may  be  named  as  especially  helpful.  The  article  on 
'  poetry '  in  the  last  volume  of  the  Encyclopedia 
Britannica  did  not  come  to  hand  in  time  to  be  of 
use  even  in  the  revision  of  the  proof-sheets."  Be- 
fore going  further  in  quotations  from  this  book, 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     71 

which  was  one  of  the  channels  of  education  through 
which  American  poetry  had  to  come,  I  cannot  re- 
frain from  underlining  the  fact  that  the  writer  of 
an  accepted  textbook  on  poetics  is  acknowledging 
the  superiority  of  an  encyclopedia.  In  his  preface 
to  the  second  edition  there  occur  the  following  para- 
graphs :  "  But  the  legendary  and  historical  basis  of 
the  epic  of  Beowulf  belongs  to  the  end  of  the  sixth 
century  (cf.  Wuelker,  Grundriss  zur  Gesch,  der  Ags. 
Litt.,  p.  206)."  Then,  "in  Paul  and  Braune's 
Beitrdge,  Vol.  IX,  Professor  Kluge  has  recently 
treated  the  history  of  rime  in  Germanic  verse,  and 
has  sought  to  establish  certain  rules  and  tests  im- 
portant for  the  study  of  Anglo-Saxon  meters  " ;  and 
"  Kluge  thus  adds  end-rime  to  the  tests  of  later  com- 
position. In  regard  to  beginning-rime  itself,  it  is 
perhaps  well  to  add  a  caution  about  its  use  in  modern 
verse.  Beginning-rime,  or  alliteration,  is  detected 
by  the  ear,  not  by  the  eye.  (Cf.  Englische  Studien, 
VIII,  390. )  "  On  the  next  page  we  find :  "  Mean- 
while, Schipper's  recent  remarks  in  the  current 
volume  of  Englische  Studien,  184  ff.,  seem  very 
sensible.  His  views  were  set  forth  in  his  Englische 
Metrik:  an  attack  upon  them  by  Wissmann  will  be 
found  in  the  Anglia,  V,  466  ff."  And  this  preface 
ends  with  the  illuminating  paragraph:  "Lastly, 
teachers  will  permit  the  suggestion  that  where  a 
class  has  some  knowledge  of  French,  it  would  be 
profitable  to  bring  out  the  excellence  of  our  own 
rhythm  by  comparing  it  with  the  meters  of  French 
verse."  To  enter  this  particular  field  of  comparison 
equipped  with  an  a  priori  judgment,  is  surely  to  be 
a  losing  victor  in  the  field. 


72  THE   RELATION    OF 

Then  follows  a  preface  to  a  third  edition,  by  a 
few  quotations  from  which  I  would  emphasize  the 
tenacity  of  the  Germanic  ideal  in  English  poetry: 
"Of  original  work,  the  first  place  belongs  to  the 
Poetik  of  Wilhelm  Scherer,  a  posthumous  work 
edited  by  his  colleague,  Dr.  Meyer."  The  nature 
of  poetry  on  the  next  page  is  thus  defined :  "  Scherer 
calls  poetry  'the  artistic  application,  or  use  (An- 
wendung),  of  language,'  with  the  limitations  that 
not  all  poetry  is  artistic  application  of  language 
(e.g.,  Ballet,  or  Pantomime,  both  wordless,  may  yet 
be  poetry)  ;  and  that  not  all  artistic  application 
of  language  (e.g.,  a  sermon,  or  other  persuasive 
rhetoric)  is  poetry.  Yet  Scherer  concedes  that 
whatever  is  rhythmic  must  be  assumed  to  be  poetry, 
though  poetry  is  not  necessarily  rhythmic.  Such 
unrhythmic  forms  as  must  be  counted  under  the 
head  of  poetry  are  in  their  general  character  always 
closely  allied  to  the  rhythmic  forms  (p.  32).  Among 
the  oldest  phases  of  poetry  are  Chorus,  Proverb, 
Tale  (Maerchen),  Charm,  and  Riddle.  The  first, 
the  choral  song  of  the  multitude  at  feast  or  sacri- 
fice, contains  all  rhythmic  germs  of  later  poetry; 
chorus  and  dance  combined  are  the  origin  of  rhythm. 
(See  pp.  9,  135,  of  this  Handbook.)  Yet  the 
primitive  tale  was  unrhythmic;  in  Scherer's  sys- 
tem, the  tale,  like  modern  romances  (e.g.,  Scott's), 
counts  as  poetry,  and  so  we  have  a  door  opened 
to  what  Mr.  Saintsbury  calls  'the  pestilent  heresy 
of  prose-poetry.' ' 

Now  if  I  should  ask  you,  "What  is  the  nature 
of  poetry?"  I  think  you  could  answer  in  one  word 
quoted  from  the  above,  "  Riddle." 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     73 

Let  us  "  riddle  "  this  theory  of  English  poetry  yet 
more  completely:  "THE  ORIGIN  OF  POETRY.  Here 
Scherer  frankly  puts  on  the  badge  of  Darwinism. 
To  be  sure,  Schiller  furnishes  him  the  word  Spiel- 
trieb;  or,  to  speak  with  Scherer,  'entertainment/ 
as  the  source  of  poetry;  but  for  the  real  origin  of 
the  thing,  recourse  is  had  to  Darwin's  views  on  the 
expression  of  emotion  in  animals.  Any  exercise  of 
one's  muscles  may  be  undertaken  in  order  to  ex- 
press or  give  pleasure;  hence  our  laughing,  our 
dancing,  and  our  singing.  Singing,  like  birds'  notes, 
may  express  pleasure  and  desire.  The  love-lyric  may 
be  led  back  directly  to  a  song  analogous  to  that  of 
the  male  bird  in  mating  time." 

So  Gummere  would  lead  the  gifted,  impression- 
able young  artist-soul  into  the  Zoo  to  find  the  source 
of  his  visions !  The  only  excuse  I  can  find  for  such 
an  authority  is  that  he  is  acting  ignorantly,  under 
a  spell,  as  a  mouthpiece  for  the  materialism  of  a 
bygone  age  and  of  a  foreign  land.  After  one  more 
weighty  reference,  this  time  to  Paul's  Grundriss  der 
germanischen  Philologie,  the  preface  to  the  third 
edition  closed  in  the  year  1890,  and  the  volume 
including  the  three  prefaces,  beginning  in  1885,  is 
issued  from  the  press  in  the  year  1902,  seventeen 
years  after! 

If  you  are  interested  in  this  subject  it  will  not  be 
difficult  for  you  to  ascertain  what  work  was  being 
done  by  the  French  poets  in  that  year.  Some  of  the 
men  whose  names  we  are  just  beginning  to  know  — 
because  they  have  recently  died  —  had  been  flourish- 
ing for  thirty  years.  One  of  them,  as  Amy  Lowell 
tells  us  in  her  delightful  volume,  "  Six  French 


74  THE   RELATION    OF 

Poets,"  realized  that  prose,  rhythmic  prose  and 
verse  were  only  a  single  instrument  graduated ;  and 
out  of  this  freedom  has  come  the  present  general 
interest  in  the  art.  So  much  for  the  "pestilent 
heresy  of  prose-poetry."  Mr.  Gummere  at  the  end 
of  his  book  vouchsafes  just  forty-one  lines  to  the 
subject  of  French  forms.  The  last  six  lines  read  as 
follows:  "The  ingenuity,  however,  which  is  re- 
quired for  the  construction  of  these  stanzas  makes 
it  doubtful  that  they  will  ever  voice  the  higher 
moods  of  poetry.  The  great  lyric  poets,  like  Goethe, 
do  their  best  work  in  simple  forms  of  verse,  in  that 
'popular  tone'  nearest  to  the  heart  of  singer  as  well 
as  hearer." 

As  a  contrast  to  what  the  gifted  race  of  present 
poets  of  America  were  taught  in  school,  let  us 
note  the  flaming  sources  from  which  our  modern 
students  are  grasping  their  inspiration  as  they  soar. 
Fletcher  in  writing  of  the  Hokku  speaks  of  the 
Japanese  quality  of  psychological  suggestion.  He 
divides  the  Hokku  in  three  layers:  a  statement  of 
fact,  emotion  deduced  from  the  fact,  and  a  sort  of 
spiritual  allegory:  the  seventeen  syllables  —  five, 
then  seven,  then  five.  He  adds :  "  The  thing  we  have 
to  follow  is  not  a  form  but  a  spirit."  In  this  twen- 
tieth century  our  point  of  view  is  psychological 
rather  than  biological.  That  English  singer  of 
Oriental  songs  who  calls  herself  Ratan  Devi  told  me 
that  in  her  study  of  Hindu  music  her  master  made 
no  allowance  for  her  own  shortcomings  and  lack  of 
endurance.  There  were  no  convenient  signs  for 
breathing  places.  If  you  have  been  so  fortunate  as 
to  read  "  Dont's  for  an  Imagiste,"  in  the  volume  of 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     75 

Poetry  for  April,  1913,  you  will  remember  "  Don't 
begin  each  line  with  a  heave."  In  the  Hindu  music 
as  Ratan  Devi  from  personal  experience  explains  it, 
whatever  the  phrase,  so  must  it  be  rendered,  And 
the  student  might  repeat  it  again  and  again;  but 
until  her  own  endurance  or  skill  had  developed  to 
the  point  of  presenting  the  song  as  it  was  written, 
it  was  not  hers  to  sing. 

The  sustained  effort  in  Oriental  song  is  like  the 
carrying  over  of  sound  in  the  subconscious  ear  in 
modern  English  that  is  called  polyphonic.  The 
Oriental  shuts  out  the  world  when  he  hears;  and 
Jane  Harrison  says,  "Only  when  one  dares  lose 
oneself  in  contemplation,  can  art  be  born."  In 
"  Mysticism  and  the  Creed  "  you  will  find  (p.  140)  : 
"Every  true  work  of  art  is  produced  in  an  ecstasy 
in  which  the  artist  is  compelled  by  an  inner  power 
greater  than  himself.  Dante  did  not  sit  down  and 
deliberately  concoct  the  Divina  Commedia  out  of 
his  own  self-conscious  mind,  but  he  saw  with  his 
immortal  eye,  and  part  of  what  he  saw  he  wrote 
down." 

The  word  "self-conscious"  deserves  a  little  at- 
tention at  our  hands.  Used  in  the  unpleasant  sense 
in  which  the  quality  of  self -consciousness  asserts 
itself,  it  means  only  a  consciousness  of  the  separated 
self,  which  is  "the  branch  cut  off  from  the  vine." 
The  new  faculty  or  state  of  mind  which  is  occasion- 
ing so  much  interest  at  the  present  time  in  the  world 
belongs  to  the  nonseparated  self  —  of  which  every- 
thing from  a  Community  Chorus  or  a  neighborhood 
party  to  a  League  of  Nations  is  the  shadow.  The 
seer  and  the  artist  have  been  ahead  of  the  world. 


76  THE    RELATION    OF 

The  world  is  catching  up.  The  seer  and  the  artist 
are  still  ahead.  That  is  why  we  have  such  books 
as  this  to  explain  them.  In  that  state  of  conscious- 
ness which  produces  in  an  artist  the  elimination  of 
the  sequential,  both  self-righteousness  and  self-pity 
are  left  behind.  Johnson  said  that  there  is  a  kind 
of  intellectual  remoteness  necessary  to  the  compre- 
hension of  a  great  work  of  art  in  its  full  design  and 
true  proportions.  There  is  popular  curiosity  about 
the  state  of  mind  in  which  seer  and  artist  have  al- 
ways dwelt.  The  book  "Tertium  Organum,"  by 
Ouspensky,  that  is  being  widely  read  by  intellectuals, 
is  written  ostensibly  from  the  scientific  standpoint. 
Unfortunately  it  is  that  kind  of  scientific  standpoint 
which  tries  to  impose  conditions  for  happenings  that 
are  beyond  its  cognizance,  being  yet  uncodified.  The 
author  even  urges  the  desirability  of  subjecting  our 
newly  found  powers  to  the  will.  The  will  is  a 
companion  of  the  three-dimensional  concept,  a  ser- 
vant of  the  separated  self  to  smooth  his  path  in  a 
dangerous  world.  The  will  is  no  longer  needed 
where  this  superior  power  is  once  achieved  or  in- 
voked. With  the  new  sight,  the  larger  sight,  one 
is  no  longer  in  a  dangerous  world.  Conflict  occurs 
which  leads  to  various  evils,  even  to  insanity,  when 
the  personal  will  and  the  limited  intellect  are  taken 
into  the  new  realm  where  they  do  not  belong.1 
We  leave  our  shoes  at  the  gate  of  the  temple.  To 
get  our  shoes  again  we  would  have  to  go  out  of 
the  temple.  We  needed  our  shoes  because  the  road 
was  rough.  The  temple  floor  is  smooth  and  they 

1  This  is  the  truth  back  of  the  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  of 
abnegation  of  the  will. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     77 

who  by  craft  or  fear  take  their  shoes  in  with  them 
may  slip. 

It  has  been  said  that  to  compose  poetry,  and  I 
would  add  music,  three  qualities  are  necessary :  sen- 
sitiveness, self-knowledge  and  sympathy.  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  too  great  burden  of  words,  like  the 
lengthy  musical  form,  shows  a  lack  of  sensitiveness. 
Intermediate  steps  are  deleted  in  the  present-day 
verse  and  music  of  even  indifferent  quality  because 
of  an  awakened  sensibility  in  the  world  at  large  to 
the  language  of  art.  The  still  higher  sensibility 
of  the  Orient  is  voiced  in  such  elisions  and  sugges- 
tions as  you  will  find  in  the  poem  "  Silk  Stock- 
ings," by  Rikahu,  in  the  volume  of  translations 
from  the  Chinese  called  "  Cathay."  In  contrast  note 
this  opening  of  a  long  poem  by  Henri  de  Reg- 
nier,  replete  with  "individual  emotion  which  is 
self -enhancement"  (Quelqu'un  songe  d'Aube  et 
d'Ombre) : 

J'ai  cru  voir  ma  tristesse,  dit-il,  et  je  1'ai  vue, 

Dit-il  plus  bas. 

Elle  etait  nue, 

Assise  dans  la  grotte  la  plus  silencieuse 

De  mes  plus  interieures  pensees. 

I  do  not  refer  to  the  difference  in  rhythm.  The 
rhythm  of  each  is  adapted  to  the  sentiment.  The 
distinction  here  is  the  viewpoint,  the  artist's  self- 
knowledge.  Among  the  benefits  of  self-knowledge 
we  must  include  the  power  of  impersonal  criticism 
of  one's  own  art  work.  Freedom,  choice  and  re- 
sponsibility are  now  the  watchwords.  This  would 
tend  to  exclude  vain  repetition,  bombast,  and  the 


78  THE    RELATION    OF 

trappings  of  Pegasus  caparisoned.  Art  is  after  all 
very  like  life.  The  clarity  of  art  lies  in  the  elimina- 
tion of  the  superfluous.  The  poignancy  of  art  lies 
in  the  possession  of  stronger  feelings  than  can  be 
expressed.  Shepard  in  his  review  of  Watson  for 
the  Dial  speaks  of  "  our  recent  rejection  of  special- 
ized poetic  diction  and  all  the  easy-going  poetic 
licenses  and  padding  expletives  of  earlier  days." 
This  finds  its  parallel  in  music  in  the  abandonment 
of  what  might  be  called  piano-tuner  technique  and 
in  the  casting  aside  of  diffuse  and  meaningless  re- 
iterations to  fill  a  "classic"  mould. 

It  is  said  of  Paul  Fort  that,  "  disdainful  of  ex- 
pected rhythms  and  domesticated  sentiments,  he  has 
taken  poetry  again  at  its  beginning."  Paul  Fort 
was  a  contemporary  of  Francis  Thompson,  and  not 
only  lived  through  the  bridging  of  the  poetic 
thought-stream  from  the  old  side  to  the  new,  but 
helped  build  the  bridge.  To  appreciate  the  frank 
succinctness  of  him  and  of  his  followers  as  opposed 
to  another  school  not  emancipated,  it  is  necessary 
only  to  read  one  sentence  in  the  book  by  Francis 
Thompson  on  Shelley.  Thompson  was  an  unfor- 
tunate visionary  who  was  given  a  vogue  by  the 
enthusiasm  of  Alice  Meynell  and  the  Catholic  branch 
of  the  family  of  Intelligentsia.  Thompson  refers 
to  a  personal  irregularity  attributed  to  Shelley  and 
delivers  himself  of  this  memorable  line :  "  Com- 
pare with  this  the  genuinely  corrupt  Byron,  through 
the  cracks  and  fissures  of  whose  heaving  versifica- 
tion steam  up  perpetually  the  sulphurous  vapours 
from  his  central  iniquity."  Despite  the  great  ad- 
miration on  the  part  of  many  people  of  excellent 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     79 

taste,  it  appears  to  me  that  where  Swinburne,  an 
original  word-rhapsodist,  blew  bright  soap  bubbles 
of  iridescent  colours,  Thompson  merely  foams  at  the 
mouth  because  he  is  not  well.  The  beauty  of  direct- 
ness in  both  poetry  and  music  was  an  inevitable  re- 
action from  the  nineteenth-century  indulgence  that 
went  for  art.  Ezra  Pound  and  Amy  Lowell  have 
done  for  English  poetry  what  Bourgault  Ducoudray 
and  Eaglefield  Hull  have  done  for  music.  Read 
Hull's  "Modern  Harmony"  and  Pound's  "Pa vanes" 
and  the  "  History  of  Romance,"  and  I  think  you 
will  feel  this  to  be  true.  In  Amy  Lowell's  book, 
"  Tendencies,"  you  can  read  some  chosen  bits  by 
the  writer  who  calls  herself  H.  D.  that  are  beautiful 
examples  of  Imagisme.  In  case  you  are  not  clear 
about  that  group  known  as  the  Imagistes  let  me 
quote  Amy  Lowell's  definition,  for  she  ought  to 
know,  being  one  of  them  herself,  and  their  self- 
appointed  ambassador:  "Imagisme  is  a  clear  rep- 
resentation of  what  the  author  wishes  to  say.  It 
is  a  presentation  of  the  thing  in  the  exact  word 
necessary.  The  Imagistes  feel  themselves  part  of  a 
renaissance;  a  renaissance,  a  rebirth  of  the  spirit 
of  truth  and  beauty,  a  rediscovery  of  beauty  in  our 
modern  world  and  the  originality  and  honesty  to 
affirm  that  beauty  in  whatever  manner  is  natural  to 
the  poet."  It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to  re- 
call that  in  1 709  Rowe  complained  regarding  Shake- 
speare, that  every  one  took  the  liberty  to  write 
according  to  the  dictates  of  his  own  fancy.  Surely 
a  finer  commentary  on  art  is  that  by  Benedetto 
Croce :  "  Every  work  of  art  is  an  organism  governed 
solely  by  its  own  law." 


80  THE   RELATION    OF 

Sometimes  among  the  modern  poets  and  musi- 
cians one  can  discern  the  parent  in  the  offspring, 
as  Verhaeren  seems  to  have  inherited  his  metric 
from  Victor  Hugo.  Debussy  and  Ravel  have  no 
musical  parent.  They  are  slim,  fine  talents,  thinner 
than  Cesar  Franck,  less  novel  than  Chopin  in  his 
time.  They  are  literally  the  thin  end  of  the  wedge. 
They  have  pried  open  the  box  that  the  Djinns  of 
classicism  sat  on  for  half  a  century  after  Chopin's 
death,  and,  mercy !  what  funny  things  have  hopped 
out :  Goossens  and  Poldowski  and  Whithorne,  with 
a  train  of  little  screaming  cacophonists  about  them. 
But  that  is  good.  One  tires  of  ugliness  —  and  then 
one  cannot  go  backward.  That  is  the  time  one 
makes  advance.  We  shall  be  flooded  by  the  pub- 
lishers with  machine-made  copies  of  twentieth- 
century  music,  as  we  have  been  and  still  are  with 
stencilled  copies  of  nineteenth-century  patterns. 
As  we  grow  weary  of  them  we  will  accept  new 
forms  again,  for  creation  will  always  be  ahead 
of  us. 

Pierre  Aubry,  who  reminded  us  that  the  new 
always  has  its  origin  in  the  archaic,  tells  us  that  in 
schools  of  minstrelsy,  that  is  to  say,  among  the  Trou- 
badours, words  and  music  were  equally  considered. 
In  this  age  it  is  once  more  the  case.  The  grotesque 
distortion  of  word-rhythms  by  which  some  of  the 
older  composers  —  among  them  that  excellent  musi- 
cian Edward  Elgar  —  robbed  their  creations  of  all 
charm  for  the  literarily  minded,  is  now  impossible 
since  the  advent  of  Cyril  Scott,  Claude  Debussy  and 
other  word-sensitive  men. 

Another  strong  characteristic  of  artists  at  this 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     81 

time  is  the  group  feeling.  In  all  periods  the  dis- 
coverer is  ahead  of  his  age,  and  yet  in  looking  back 
upon  the  history  of  art  these  people  are  seen  in 
clusters.  But  in  this  twentieth  century  the  clusters 
are  visible  without  the  perspective  of  remoteness. 
Indeed  many  truisms  regarding  art  of  former  times 
seem  no  longer  to  hold  good.  Albert  Heumann 
writes  in  his  book  "  Mouvement  Litteraire  Beige 
d'Expression  Franchise,"  that  a  fecund  and  inde- 
pendent literature  commonly  exists  in  a  country  of 
perfect  material  prosperity  and  of  an  absolute  po- 
litical autonomy.  The  fecund  and  independent 
literature  which  has  arisen  in  the  beginning  of  the 
twentieth  century,  however,  has  come  through  the 
new  dynamic  power  of  individuals  who  do  not  pity 
themselves.  And  musically,  it  came  thus  in  Russia 
and  in  France.  The  young  men  of  the  new  move- 
ment do  not  bemoan  either  their  poverty  or  their 
exile.  They  chose  poverty,  they  elected  to  live  where 
their  art  could  flourish.  They  are  concerned  not 
with  self-expression,  but  with  intangible  beauty  to 
which  they  render  allegiance;  and  I  feel  safe  in 
assuming  that  to  some  of  them,  such  scholars  and 
mystics  are  they,  the  following  phrases  which  I 
found  in  a  book  by  Bailly  would  not  sound  strange. 
The  book  by  Bailly  is  called  "  Le  Chant  des  Voyelles 
comme  Invocation  aux  Dieux  Planetaires"  : 

"The  vowel  equals  the  unit  in  arithmetic,  the 
point  in  geometry,  the  letter  in  grammar.  Com- 
bined with  material  substance,  such  as  the  consonant, 
like  soul  with  body,  and  harmony  with  strings,  the 
result  is  animated  beings :  tones  and  songs,  faculties 
productive  of  divine  things."  Then  Bailly  quotes 


82  THE    RELATION    OF 

this  from  St.  Irenee,  who  cites  it  from  the  Gnostic, 
Marcus : 

A  equals  the  first  heaven 

E  equals  the  second  heaven 

H  equals  the  third  heaven 

I  the  fourth  heaven,  which  is  the  center 

0  the  fifth  heaven 

T  the  sixth  heaven 

0  the  seventh,  which  "  is  the  fourth  after  that 
which  is  the  center." 

The  Gnostic  Marcus  continues :  "  These  powers  unite 
in  a  universal  hymn  which  they  love  to  chant  in 
honour  of  him  who  produced  them."  Quoted  by 
Eusebe  de  Cesaree,  Livre  5,  Chapitre  14,  is  the  fol- 
lowing: "Les  sept  lettres  voyelles  me  celebrent, 
moi  qui  suis  le  Dieu  imperissable ;  pere  infatigable 
de  tous  les  etres,  je  suis  la  cithare  indestructible  de 
1'univers;  c'est  moi  qui  ait  trouve  1'accord  har- 
monieux  des  tourbillons  des  cieux!"  (The  seven 
vowels  celebrate  me  who  am  the  everlasting  God: 
the  untiring  father  of  all  created  things,  the  im- 
perishable cithara  of  the  universe;  it  is  I  who  have 
harmonized  the  whirlwinds  of  heaven.) 

There  are  certain  correspondences  which  it  may 
be  interesting  at  this  point  to  note :  the  seven  vowels, 
the  seven  senses,  the  seven  planets,  the  seven  tones ; 
and,  if  you  are  interested  in  music  used  therapeuti- 
cally,  seven  ganglia  of  the  sympathetic  nervous  sys- 
tem.1 The  best  exoteric  description  of  the  seven 
senses  that  I  can  present  in  this  connection  is  a 
series  of  seven  increasingly  large  circles,  one  drawn 

1  According  to  Hindoo  books,  the  sacral,  prostatic,  epigas- 
tric, pineal,  cardiac,  pharyngeal,  and  postnasal. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     83 

around  another.  Let  us  label  them  in  this  order, 
beginning  at  the  center,  because  Taste  is  the  sense 
quite  within  the  body:  Taste,  Touch,  Smell,  Sight, 
Hearing,  —  the  five  physical  senses.  But  these,  it 
is  generally  conceded,  are  all  one  in  various  aspects. 
The  sixth,  then,  would  be  the  functioning  of  that 
which  manifests  as  these  five,  freed  from  the  limita- 
tions of  time  and  space.  In  other  words,  we  have 
as  our  sixth  sense  the  use  of  these  five,  free  from 
material  conditions,  manifesting  as  clairaudience, 
clairvoyance,  and  all  analogous  knowledge  on  this 
plane.  That  is  doubtless  a  state  of  conscious  activ- 
ity to  which  the  normal  man  is  entitled :  and  the  fact 
that  we  have  the  phrase  "the  seven  senses''  would 
indicate  the  possibility  of  our  arriving  at  their  pos- 
session. The  seventh  sense,  however,  appears  to  be 
the  achievement  of  a  spiritual  perception  which, 
when  attained  on  this  plane  of  existence,  lifts  its 
possessor  to  the  highest  state  of  evolution  consonant 
with  incarnation  on  this  planet ; l  and  such  a  human 
being  would  be  so  far  removed  from  common  per- 
ceptions that  he  would  seem  to  us  scarcely  a  human 
being.  The  Buddhists  of  India  and  Japan  lay  claim 
to  such  sages  as  their  incarnate  leaders. 

Of  the  seven  senses,  Taste,  we  would  say,  was  the 
lowest  because  entirely  enclosed  within  the  physical 
body ;  Touch  would  come  next,  being  to  our  knowl- 
edge not  further  removed  from  the  body,  even  in  the 
most  holy  instance,  than  the  hem  of  the  garment. 
Smell  is  the  third.  The  fourth  is  Sight.  Consider 
for  a  moment  the  fourth  vowel  as  quoted  by  St. 
Irenee.  That  is  the  vowel  I.  We  know  the  im- 

1  Refer  to  lecture  on  Rhythm. 


84  THE   RELATION    OF 

portance,  physical  and  mystical,  attributed  to  sight. 
The  ancient  mystic  named  the  vowel  I  as  the  corre- 
spondence to  the  fourth  heaven,  "which  is  the 
center."  You  will  remember,  perhaps,  that  of  the 
old  Greek  modes  it  is  the  fourth  note  which  is 
the  tonic.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  the 
number  of  languages  in  which  the  vowel  referred  to 
(the  fourth)  signifies  the  person.  I  find  in  a  book 
by  the  Blessed  John  Ruysbroeck  called  "Love's 
Gradatory,"  this  curious  analogue:  "After  this 
flows  the  fourth  stream  of  the  humble  life,  which  is 
the  total  abandonment  of  all  self-will  and  all  that 
touches  self."  Is  this  then  one  of  the  mystical  para- 
doxes, and  is  the  stone  that  we  call  the  chief  of  the 
corner  rejected  by  the  Builder? 

In  my  Conference  on  the  Modes  I  did  not  feel 
justified  in  including  an  astrological  working-out  of 
the  semitones  of  the  octave  or  that  of  various  tonal 
arrangements  used  by  the  Greeks,  the  Europeans, 
and  Scriabin  and  Debussy,  because  it  was  empirical 
and  tentative.  But  I  may  say  in  this  connection  that 
the  fixed  signs  of  the  Zodiac  came  in  such  places 
in  this  working-out  as  to  suggest  a  superphysical 
potency  in  chords  of  fourths. 

Ritual  music  began  in  our  age  with  Wagner; 
ritual  poetry  with  Yeats.  The  dance,  if  taken  as 
the  actual  motion  of  the  body  itself,  would  by  com- 
mon consent  be  considered  the  most  material  of  the 
arts ;  but  transmute  it  by  purpose  and  design  into  a 
ritual  bridge  and  it  not  only  involves  all  the  other 
arts,  but  itself  proves  that  nothing  is  common  or  to 
be  despised.  For  that  with  which  we  began  at  the 
center,  physical  body,  reaches  out  into  the  spirit, 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     85 

and  that  which  we  placed  remotely  as  the  spirit  is 
the  eternal  center. 

Artists  work  as  Mr.  Pearsall  Smith  ("The  English 
Language")  has  done,  according  to  the  instinctive 
process  arising  independently  of  reason,  though 
afterward  justified  by  it.  It  is  comforting  to  those 
of  us  who  believe  in  this  method  to  read  on  page  v 
of  the  preface  to  Granville's  "  Differential  and  In- 
tegral Calculus  " :  "  The  object  is  not  to  teach  the 
student  to  rely  on  his  intuition,  but,  in  some  cases, 
to  use  this  faculty  in  advance  of  analytical  investi- 
gation." I  am  privileged  to  quote  from  a  manu- 
script by  Miss  J.  Landseer  Mackenzie,  "  Knowing, 
feeling,  striving,"  as  the  proper  sequence  to  be 
observed.  And  an  Oriental  artist  has  said,  "The 
answer  comes  first."  Since,  as  we  learned  in  the 
Conference  on  Rhythm,  "rhythm  links  up  the  in- 
tellect and  feeling,"  a  mistaken  order  of  those  three 
is  out  of  rhythm,  and  disharmony  of  some  sort  re- 
sults. If,  as  Scriabin  says,  the  meditating  prophet 
and  the  creative  artist  sit  at  the  center  receiving  the 
finer  vibrations  that  are  entirely  hidden  from  the 
masses,  the  creative  artist,  and  I  judge  the  recreator, 
or  interpretative  artist,  to  be  of  his  class,  must 
realize  to  the  full  his  power  and  his  responsibility. 
The  fourth  heaven  is  the  realization  of  our  person 
in  its  essence,  renounced  and  discovered,  "  lost "  and 
therefore  "saved,"  —  no  longer  separated  from  the 
All.  That  is  Sight.  A  resume  of  the  order  of  sense 
perceptions  might  be  made  in  this  form : 

1.  Taste. 

2.  Touch. 

3.  Smell. 


86  THE   RELATION    OF 

4.  Sight. 

5.  Hearing. 

6.  Duplication  of  lower  plane  sense  perceptions, 
without  material  considerations  limiting  their 
function ;  all  five  being  united  in  the  sixth, 
or  the  one  Sense  of  Sense  completely  mani- 
fested    (clairvoyance,    clairaudience,    knowl- 
edge of  sealed  letters  in  unknown  languages, 
etc.). 

7.  Perception  of  "  spiritual  or  secondary  causes  " 
(Edinburgh    Lectures,    Troward)    in    images 
not  conceivable  on  the  earth  plane;  the  last 
sense  to  be  evolved  on  the  earth  plane,  —  gen- 
erally developed  only  after  material  dissolu- 
tion.    "  Spiritual   or   secondary   causes "   are 
referred  to  in   Magic   sometimes   as   "  Great 
Princes " ;   in  relation  to  Egyptian  music  as 
"  planetary  gods,"  and  are  probably  the  objects 
of  invocation  with  results  obtained  here  by 
the  law  of  correspondences. 

These  senses,  you  will  see,  are  physically  in  in- 
verse ratio  to  Spiritual  Verity,  inasmuch  as  the  first 
is  the  one  quite  within  the  body :  Taste,  most  bound 
to  the  perishable  physical  consciousness  —  the  transi- 
tory need  of  bodily  protection  which  was  perhaps 
the  original  purpose  of  the  sense  of  taste. 

The  senses,  the  tones,  the  planets,  the  vowels, 
ranged  one  against  another,  all  seven  of  them,  would 
make  an  interesting  playground  for  the  artist  who 
wished  to  practice  a  modern  Gematria  and  be  really 
what  the  musician  is  called  in  India  —  the  magi- 
cian; and  the  audience,  properly  educated,  to  use  a 
phrase  of  Dr.  Coomaraswamy,  "  cooperates  with  the 
magician." 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     87 

h  Taste  A  Tones 

%  Touch  E  * 

$  Smell  H  * 

O  Sight  I  * 

9  Hearing  0  * 

5  The  Sense  of  Sense     T  * 

D  The  Seventh  Q  * 

The  tones  cannot  to  advantage  be  arranged 
illustratively  in  the  above  chart,  inasmuch  as  their 
arrangement  according  to  the  mode  employed  brings 
forth  its  corresponding  result.  It  is  noteworthy  that 
the  sign  for  the  Sun  is  crudely  representative  of  the 
organ  of  the  eye ;  also  the  vowel  upsilon  is  the  mark 
of  distinction  between  the  planets  Venus  and  Mer- 
cury. In  the  New  York  Library  the  card  catalogue 
of  books  on  the  Alphabet  offers  a  range  of  inex- 
haustible material  which  is  doubtless  duplicated  in 
some  measure  in  smaller  libraries. 

Forrest  Reed  in  his  book  on  William  Butler  Yeats 
reminds  us  of  the  ritual  words  that  Yeats  loves  to 
use  from  time  to  time,  not  to  fill  in  space  but  for  his 
own  purposes:  "wither,"  "blossoming,"  "crozier," 
"  the  shining  seven  "  —  beautiful  old  strange  words, 
some  of  them  so  new  to  us  that  they  seem  peculiar 
to  him.  In  poetry,  as  new  thoughts  creep  in,  new 
words  will  creep  out :  in  music,  as  new  conscious- 
ness is  awakened,  new  chords  are  conceived.  You 
will  remember  Miss  Landseer  Mackenzie  has  said 
"chords  correspond  to  subdivisions  of  idea  in 
language." 

These  are  not  common  or  vulgar  words,  but  an- 
cient and  mystical  words  of  awe  and  beauty  and 


88  THE    RELATION    OF 

wonder,  symbols  of  those  unknown  things  of  which 
art  is  the  perception.  So  in  music,  since  a  new  con- 
sciousness has  been  awakened  in  men  of  the  West- 
ern world  —  and  the  artist  is  the  peak  that  first 
catches  the  sun's  rays  —  the  chords  that  "  represent 
the  subdivisions  of  idea  in  language  "  tend  to  employ 
fourths  —  early  symbols  of  glory  long  forgotten. 

In  "Delinquent  Gods,"  I  find  that  its  author, 
Frank  Fruttchey,  believes  that  music  is  absolutely 
dependent  upon  the  student's  ability  to  arouse  what 
are  commonly  termed  the  finer  forces  of  human 
potentiality.  Let  us  say  the  composer's  ability  — 
not  the  student's.  If  the  thing  which  touches  the 
"finer  forces  of  human  potentiality"  is  not  inher- 
ent in  the  music,  what  can  the  student  do  but  deceive 
himself  and  try  to  extend  the  deception?  Plato 
considered  the  Lydian  mode  sufficiently  powerful  to 
render  a  nation  effeminate,  and  in  "  Modern  Paint- 
ing," Marriott  writes :  "  The  man  who  believes  that 
the  invisible  world  is  the  real  world  will  not  be  apt 
to  employ  his  medium  to  depict  appearances." 

You  will  read  in  "  Pavanes,"  "  For  every  '  great 
age'  a  few  poets  have  written  a  few  beautiful 
lines  or  found  a  few  exquisite  melodies,  and  ten 
thousand  people  have  copied  them,  until  each  strand 
of  music  is  planed  down  to  a  dullness."  The  crea- 
tive artist  does  not  "  seek  "  effects.  Watchfulness 
can  only  be  employed  critically ;  it  cannot  be  creative. 
Watchfulness  is  one  function  of  the  self-knowledge 
that  is  a  gift  of  the  poet,  lest  he  "say  badly  in  poetry 
what  has  been  well  said  in  prose."  But  in  the 
creative  sequence  of  "knowing,  feeling,  striving," 
this  function  does  not  enter.  It  pays  a  visit  the  day 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     89 

after,  spectacles  on  nose,  to  see  the  result.  In  art 
we  are  dealing  with  creation. 

One  of  the  parallels  between  ultramodern  music 
and  ultramodern  poetry  is  the  choice  of  exotic  sub- 
jects; and  although  these  were  fashionable,  even 
prevalent,  in  the  France  of  a  past  generation,  the 
exotic  was  used  more  as  an  idiom  than  as  an  ex- 
pansion of  consciousness.  In  those  days  we  con- 
quered strange  peoples  instead  of  learning  from 
them.  The  exotic  idea  has  not  developed  in  this 
period  in  both  directions  as  one  might  imagine, — 
toward  intensity  of  concept  on  the  one  hand  and  an 
illustrative  lightness  on  the  other.  The  mimetic  is 
less  frequently  employed  in  the  twentieth  century 
representation  of  strange  lands  than  it  was  in  the 
century  preceding;  but  the  characteristic  underlying 
feeling  of  the  Orient,  which  is  a  psychological  value, 
is  evident,  as  indeed  it  could  not  help  being,  in  view 
of  the  psychological  developments  that  have  taken 
place  in  all  European  countries  in  the  last  half 
century. 

There  is  a  sharp  line  of  demarcation  between 
those  artists  who  use  exotic  scenes  to  enliven  dead 
motives  and  those  whose  exotic  scenes  are  in- 
separable from  the  motives  displayed.  We  are  all 
familiar  with  such  poor  imitations  of  the  Oriental 
as  "Pale  Hands"  by  Amy  Woodford  Finden;  and 
while  I  do  not  wish  to  be  ungracious  to  a  prominent 
composer  of  my  own  country  whose  achievements 
are  notable,  it  would  not  be  honest  to  evade  in  this 
connection  the  avowal  of  a  deep  distaste  for  the 
coupling  of  well-known  Bengali  songs  with  eru- 
dite and  sophisticated  Western  harmonization.  The 


90  THE    RELATION    OF 

English  transgression  in  the  treatment  of  exotic 
themes  is  more  naive.  France  has  sinned  greatly 
in  her  song  literature  of  Oriental  cast.  Of  French 
Eastern  songs  bearing  verisimilitude  to  the  Orient, 
the  best  are  by  an  American,  Walter  Morse  Rum- 
mel.  Russia  is  half  Eastern  in  spite  of  the  Ger- 
manic influence  that  for  centuries  practically  banned 
her  native  musical  speech.  We  talk  of  Russian 
music  and  the  layman  thinks  of  the  Volga  Boat- 
song,  while  the  connoisseur  thinks  perhaps  of 
Stravinski,  and  the  small  professional,  still  standing 
like  a  marionette  where  his  German  music  teacher 
left  him,  thinks  of  Rubinstein  or  Tschaikowski.  For 
discrimination  between  a  dead  motive  enlivened  with 
a  bit  of  Oriental  colour,  and  an  exotic  scene  in  which 
motive  and  colour  are  inseparable,  the  simplest 
method  is  to  note  what  the  music  or  poetry  in  ques- 
tion has  in  common  with  all  music  or  poetry.  The 
residue  is  open  to  analysis  as  being  distinctive.  On 
this  basis  of  judgment  we  have  to  deal  with  mode, 
with  rhythm,  with  interval  and  with  chord  arrange- 
ments. Certain  intervals  and  chords  are  familiar 
to  us  by  association ;  as  the  word  "  steppes "  in  a 
poem  would  give  the  casual  reader  the  sensation 
of  something  Russian,  or  the  word  "  fjord "  of 
something  Norwegian,  though  he  had  never  seen, 
even  in  imagination,  a  fjord  or  a  steppe.  There  you 
have  our  property-room  of  the  theater  of  music. 
It  has  relative  value,1  but  no  greater  absolute  value 
than  has  aesthetic  judgment.  What  is  Iceland  and 
what  is  Persia,  in  terms  of  music?  Had  we  been 

1  Conrad  Aiken,  "  Skepticisms,"  pp.  24,  25. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO   ARCHAIC   MUSIC     91 

so  taught,  the  minor  second  would  mean  Snorri 
Sturluson  instead  of  Omar  Khayyam. 

It  would  be  a  limitation  of  this  theme  to  tally  off 
one  poet  against  one  musician,  yet  certain  similar 
qualities  come  out  in  similar  types  of  people  and 
their  work.  Those  artists  not  limited  to  the  plane  in 
which  their  bodies  are  incarnate,  reveal  inevitably 
in  their  work  the  spreading  of  their  wings.  To 
Stravinski  the  interest  in  the  superphysical  can  from 
his  works  with  some  security  be  imputed,  notwith- 
standing the  denial  by  his  friends.  He  has  at  all 
events  familiarity  with  ancient  runes  used  in  a 
Russian  ritual  which  approaches  pagan  nature- 
worship,  and  these  same  runes  are  the  very  frame- 
work of  at  least  one  Sonata  by  Alexander  Scriabin. 

An  Englishman  of  an  earlier  generation  mentally 
is  Granville  Bantock.  When  he  essays  the  exotic, 
instead  of  making  Oriental  pictures  by  laying  on  the 
paint  so  that  it  forms  the  shapes,  he  gives  us  English 
drawings  filled  in  with  Oriental  colours.  It  is  on  a 
larger  scale  what  the  French  song  writers  did  a 
generation  ago  and  what  Rhene-Baton  and  other 
small  Frenchmen  are  doing  now.  A  similar  im- 
pression is  produced  by  a  volume  of  recent  transla- 
tions from  Chinese  poetry  called  a  "  Lute  of  Jade." 
Compared  with  the  volume  "  Cathay,"  the  fault  is 
glaring.  This  fault,  superficially  considered,  is  a 
lack  of  technique;  but  essentially  it  is  a  lack  of  the 
artist's  demand  upon  himself  for  that  technique, 
which  means  of  course  an  insufficient  appreciation 
of  his  theme.  So  it  comes  down,  at  the  end,  to  the 
sincerity  of  the  artist  in  approaching  his  subject. 
Absorbing  devotion  to  his  subject  and  exquisite  care 


92  THE   RELATION    OF 

in  all  details  of  its  presentation  can  hardly  be  ex- 
emplified in  modern  music  better  than  in  the  works 
of  the  late  Charles  Griffes.  In  that  connection  I 
would  like  to  offer  this  critique  written  by  a  fellow 
artist,  which  I  have  culled  from  the  Musical  Leader 
of  August  30,  1917: 

"From  the  musical  standpoint  the  detail  which 
stood  forth  in  bold  relief  was  the  orchestration  sup- 
plied by  Charles  T.  Griffes  for  a  pantomime  done  by 
Itow  and  Miss  Lindahl. 

"  Mr.  Griffes  is  a  young  American  composer  who 
has  attracted  considerable  attention  for  his  com- 
positions of  a  larger  form,  particularly  for  ballet 
and  pantomime.  He  caught  the  spirit  of  Japan  to  a 
remarkable  degree,  using  here  and  there  a  few 
themes  that  are  genuine  folk-tunes  taken  down  by 
himself,  and  the  development  is  done  in  a  manner 
entirely  Japanese  with  no  attempt  at  Occidental 
harmonization,  using  open  octaves,  fifths  and  major 
and  minor  seconds  only.  The  orchestration  is  made 
for  violin,  viola,  'cello  and  bass,  all  muted  and  all 
sustaining  organ  points  but  carrying  none  of  the 
themes.  These  are  left  to  the  flute,  clarinet  and 
oboe,  supplemented  by  a  Chinese  gong,  a  Chinese 
tom-tom  used  in  entirely  Oriental  manner,  two 
tympani  and  a  harp.  Throughout,  the  music  and 
the  dance,  as  well  as  the  staging,  had  the  delicacy 
and  distinction  of  a  Japanese  print.  The  subject 
concerns  a  legendary  dance  of  Old  Japan  called 
'  Sho-Jo,  or  The  Spirit  of  Wine,  —  a  Symbol  of 
Happiness.' ' 

Let  me  call  your  attention  to  the  musical  material 
to  which  Mr.  Griffes  limited  himself  in  the  composi- 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     93 

tion  referred  to.  You  will  see  the  phrase  "open 
octaves,  fifths,  and  major  and  minor  seconds  only." 
The  "third,"  to  which  we  are  so  devoted  in  the 
music  of  our  expiring  period,  was  according  to  all 
accounts  an  unused  interval  in  archaic  music.1  So 
persistently  is  it  lacking  that  you  will  find  in  "  Die 
Anfange  der  Musik,"  by  Stumpf,  such  passages  as 
the  following :  "  Darum  wiirden  der  Dreiklang  und 
der  Dominant-septimen  Akkord,  die  wir  unwill- 
kiirlich  zu  dieser  Melodic  hinzudenken,  unzulassige 
Zuthaten  sein " ;  and  "  Sind  Dreiklange,  Akkorde 
iiberhaupt,  ein  ganz  spates  Produkt,  eine  gothische 
Barbarei,  wie  sie  Rousseau  nannte?" 

If  the  impulse  is  less  than  sympathetic,  an  exotic 
subject  had  better  not  be  approached.  The  only 
difference  between  faults  and  dear  foibles  lies  in 
the  sympathy  or  interest  attaching  to  their  posses- 
sors; for  personal  and  national  characteristics  are 
ponderable  only  on  the  scales  of  affection.  Really 
the  faith  of  a  child  is  valuable  to  a  student  of  art. 
William  James  has  been  quoted  to  me  as  saying  that 
he  preferred  not  to  read  a  criticism  on  a  work  of  art, 
for  while  science  was  of  the  mind  and  liable  to 
searching  criticism,  art  was  of  the  spirit  and  one 
should  take  it  or  leave  it,  but  not  analyze  it. 

The  detail  in  academic  study  of  music  and  of 
poetry  must  never  descend  to  profanation  or  a  willful 
deafness  to  a  new  message.  It  is  not  well  to  con- 
fuse analytical  study  of  method  with  understanding 
of  the  word,  for  analysis  is  studying  not  the  thing, 
but  about  the  thing;  the  clothing,  not  the  being. 

1  See  Maurice  Emmanuel. 


Otherwise  it  is  as  if  desiring  to  understand  what 
my  neighbor  says  to  me  in  the  French  tongue,  I 
should  undertake  Bertrand  Clover's  "  Phonetics  and 
Morphology  of  the  French  Language,"  or  Gustave 
Koerting's  "  Formen-lehren  der  Franzosischen 
Sprache,"  instead  of  myself  establishing  direct  con- 
tact with  the  thing,  as  a  child  does,  and  letting  that 
contact  widen  and  deepen  through  sympathy  and 
use. 

Now  contact  with  the  arts  of  music  and  poetry  is 
through  the  ear.  Unfortunately  the  appreciation  of 
both  these  arts  is  retarded  in  America  by  lack  of 
cadence  in  our  speech  and  the  consequently  inhibited 
apperception  of  all  but  the  crudest  rhythms  and 
dynamic  shadings.  If  we  are  listening  to  music  and 
desire  receptivity  to  the  message,  should  we  by  our 
training  listen  for  a  Neapolitan  Sixth  or  should  we 
put  our  minds  in  a  state  of  "  sensing  "  —  as  our  wise 
forbears  used  to  say  — the  relations  and  propor- 
tions that  are  music  itself,  though  they  be  strange 
to  us  ?  In  a  new  language  the  word  is  not  at  fault 
if  we  do  not  understand  it.  We  may  laugh  at  its 
funny  sound  the  first  time  we  hear  it,  but  on  ac- 
quaintance it  has  its  own  meaning  for  us.  So  with 
a  musical  idiom  or  a  cadence  in  vers  libre.  The 
more  highly  evolved  the  human  being,  the  less  he 
finds  the  strange  thing  funny.  By  the  time  he  is  a 
cultured  person  he  has  met  so  many  strange  things 
and  so  broadened  his  intelligence  to  receive  them, 
that  it  is  almost  his  instinct  to  see  himself  as  ridicu- 
lous because  not  yet  all-embracing.  Suppose  we 
look  at  ourselves  from  the  point  of  view  of  Sohon- 
berg,  who  knew  more  as  a  child  about  music  than 


ULTRAMODERN    TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     95 

most  of  us  do  now :  we  shall  still  have  a  right  to  our 
opinion  —  an  undisputed  right;  nobody  else  wants 
it.  Keeping  our  alarm  clock  of  poetical  judgment 
set  for  A.D.  1879  gives  us  a  doubtful  qualification 
to  appraise  the  poetry  of  1920.  Is  the  fault  neces- 
sarily with  the  poetry  and  music  if  they  fail  to  find 
response  in  us?  I  have  read  that  a  keen  ear  for 
prosody  and  a  nice  perception  of  quantity  may  have 
been  something  of  a  rarity  among  the  upper  classes 
even  in  the  Augustan  Age.  We  are  not  greatly 
culpable  for  our  lack  of  appreciation.  Robert 
Bridges,  the  present  Laureate,  made,  I  suppose,  the 
first  serious  efforts  towards  the  establishment  of  the 
element  of  quantity  in  English  poetry. 

Mary  Halleck  writes :  "  We  are  rhythmic  because 
the  physical  man  demands  it";  and  again,  "The 
iambus  enters  in  and  out,  just  so,  as  rhythms  go, 
by  the  clock."  What  then  of  Quintuple  time?  It 
was  in  favour  with  the  ancient  Greeks  and  is  found 
not  only  in  the  folk-songs  of  the  Finns,  Turks, 
Negroes  and  the  Basques,  but  in  Bavarian  and 
Bohemian  dances.  Charles  S.  Myers  writes  that 
the  Peonic  or  Hemiolic  rhythm  of  the  Greeks  is 
founded  on  "the  ratio  3:2."  The  Chinese  say,  it 
will  be  recalled,  that  the  ratio  of  3 : 2  represents  the 
World-order,  of  which  music  is  the  image.  Then 
the  "physical  man"  is  perhaps,  after  all,  not  the 
arbiter  of  rhythm.  Among  the  savage  race  of  the 
Sarawaks  there  are  complicated  rhythms  surpassing 
our  achievements.  Just  as  the  Greeks,  according  to 
some  authorities,  subdivided  each  beat  of  the  five 
into  five,  so  that  the  whole  foot  might  contain  the 
ratio  15:10,  the  Sarawaks  use  a  drum  called  the 


96 


THE   RELATION   OF 


Tawak,  whose  measure  has  been  mechanically  reg- 
istered as  noted  below : 


p 

E 

r 

t 

b 

I/ 

I 

j—™**. 

* 

r 

r 

r  . 

r 

t 

c 

V             i 

r 

• 

f 

f 

G 

d 

I/ 

1              i 

—  -m. 

•       _ 

*       A  * 

m 

^  • 

This,  it  will  be  seen,  is  15/16: 10/16,  or  the  precise 
ratio  of  the  two  parts  attributed  to  a  measure  of 
the  ancient  Greeks,  a  rapid  rhythm  of  three  and 
two  in  this  exotic  instance,  used  with  dotted  values. 
As  complexities  of  Hindu  music  are  consonant 
with  their  weaving  of  textiles,  so  exotic  poetry  has 
as  fine  rhythmic  values  as  exotic  music.  According 
to  Headlam,  many  of  the  complexities  of  Greek 
lyric  meter  may  be  traced  to  an  overlapping  of 
rhythms  one  by  another.  He  attributes  their  aesthe- 
tic value  to  an  effect  resembling  counterpoint  in 
music.  I  adduce  this  bit  of  learning  as  an  analogue 
to  the  technical  skill  employed  by  some  of  the 
younger  and  more  advanced  of  our  English  and 
American  poets.  With  such  skill  do  they  choose  the 
words  that  their  thoughts  are  to  flow  in,  that  ripple 
overlaps  ripple,  creating  in  the  mind  sound  under 
sound,  tones  over  tones.  It  is  no  longer  a  linear 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     97 

art,  their  English  verse  —  they  have  given  it  a  sec- 
ond dimension. 

To  distinguish  then  between  a  truly  exotic  sub- 
ject in  modern  poetry  or  music  and  the  commercial 
mannerism  which  one  might  call  the  Cry  of  the 
Bazaar,  we  have  but  to  see  whether  the  arrange- 
ment of  words,  of  thoughts,  of  images,  of  tones,  is 
monotonous  or  slangy,  or  whether  our  power  of 
discrimination  can  discern  proportion,  diversity  or 
skill  that  is  new  to  us.  Noting  the  sound  of  modern 
poetry  and  music  from  this  standpoint  we  shall  find 
in  the  best  of  each  certain  similarities:  (i)  rhythms 
that  give  freedom  from  the  physical,  measured  beat ; 
(2)  patterns  and  runes  in  place  of  tunes;  (3)  exotic 
subjects  and  exotic  treatment :  and  consequent  upon 
this  new  material,  (4)  the  relegation  of  grandilo- 
quence to  the  ash  heap.  It  is  burned  out.  It  no 
longer  gives  us  warmth. 

The  same  alertness  that  makes  us  ready  for  the 
new  if  it  is  good,  makes  us  fierce  against  the  new  if 
it  is  bad.  For  it  is  an  imposition  to  try  to  "  do  "  so 
amiable  a  person  as  the  open-minded  one.  If  the 
exotic  is  one  of  the  salient  features  of  ultramodern 
music  and  poetry,  it  is  worth  while  to  note  the  line  of 
demarcation  between  those  who  use  exotic  scenes  to 
brighten  up  an  old  set  of  ideas  and  those  whose  exotic 
scenes  are  inseparable  from  the  ideas  displayed. 
This  feature  of  ultramodern  music  and  poetry  is  so 
interwoven  with  another  parallel  between  the  two 
arts  at  the  present  day,  which  I  might  call  expansion 
of  limited  rhythm  or  freedom  from  the  dance  beat, 
that  the  one  will  be  discerned  in  the  other.  Again, 
growing  out  of  this  expansion  of  the  rhythmical 


98  THE   RELATION    OF 

feeling  and  toward  the  contemplative  attitude  of 
the  Orient,  we  find  another  parallel  in  music  and 
poetry  which  does  not  embody  the  consecutive  or 
sequential.  The  real  creators  of  art  disregard  what 
are  called  the  conditions  of  life.  It  is  in  moments 
when  inspiration  fails  that  they  reflect  their  time. 
Arthur  Waugh  in  the  Outlook  (London,  1917) 
writes :  "  Over  and  over  again,  in  studying  the  new 
school  of  poetry,  one  is  impressed  by  the  conviction 
that  it  achieves  beauty  as  it  were  by  a  divine  acci- 
dent, and  very  seldom  at  the  cost  of  that  austere 
spiritual  discipline  which  is  the  secret  of  all  great 
art."  Were  it  not  for  doing  this  critic  an  injustice, 
I  would  like  to  have  closed  that  quotation  after  the 
words  "  divine  accident " ;  for  I  believe  that  he  per- 
ceived the  essence  of  much  of  the  beauty  of  our 
modern  art  before  writing  that  phrase,  and  perhaps 
did  not  realize  that  such  divine  accidents  come  as 
a  result  of  just  that  austere  spiritual  discipline  whose 
evidence  he  at  once  admits  and  deplores.  To  attain 
the  realm  of  ecstasy  is  justification  enough  for  a 
work  of  art. 

In  the  poetry  and  music  of  our  present  day, 
rhythms  have  become  individual.  Form,  the  greater 
mould  for  rhythm  to  flow  through,  has  become  in- 
dividual ;  arrangements  of  letters  as  of  tones  are 
made  for  more  profound  reactions  than  are  conse- 
quent upon  alliteration  or  the  mimetic.  Just  as 
Benedetto  Croce  wrote  that  every  art  work  was  an 
independent  organism  in  itself,  to  be  judged  by  its 
own  laws,  so  Mark  Pattison,  a  writer  in  England  of 
twenty  years  ago,  felt  that  any  brilliant  example  of 
a  successful  departure  from  a  given  form  was  a 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     99 

success.  Of  course  if  we  abandon  previous  un- 
conscious concepts  —  which  one  might  term  preju- 
dices—  Puritanism  has  to  go.  Toussaint  in  his 
poems  shows  us  Eastern  luxury  of  loving.  The 
Dreamy  Peer  of  County  Meath  tells  us  lies  of  three 
hemispheres  such  as  in  our  childhood  would  have 
called  for  soap  and  water  on  our  tongues  —  and  we 
forgive  him;  and  Anisfeld  from  Russia  gives  us 
pictures  at  our  Metropolitan  Opera  House  that  make 
us  rejoice  in  him.  At  last  we  have  forgotten  to 
fancy  the  Arabs  heathen,  the  Irish  Popish  knaves, 
the  Russians  bearded  barbarians.  We  have  for- 
gotten these  local  superstitions  through  art,  the  art 
of  the  twentieth  century.  The  earth  is  girdled  with 
art  now,  and  it  is  not  an  old  ceinture  mended,  but  a 
new  vision  of  truth  and  beauty.  Moussorgski's 
dictum  is  that  music  must  continue  to  reflect  our 
human  evolution  or  die.  That  does  not  mean 
physical  evolution.  Our  physical  side  is  close  to  less 
animate  nature.  Even  our  nervous  reactions  are 
found  now  to  duplicate  those  of  the  trees.  Human 
evolution  is  an  unsheathing  of  the  white  light  within. 

The  "  less  concern  with  dogma  and  more  with 
truth"  that  Amy  Lowell  attributes  to  the  modern 
poets  is  equally  true  of  the  modern  musicians.  Any 
measure,  old  or  new,  can  be  used.  But  scholarship 
is  required  on  the  part  of  the  poet  if  his  dream  is  to 
make  its  own  form,  "lest  he  say  badly  in  poetry 
what  has  been  well  said  in  prose." 

Rare  rhythms  come  into  England  through  France 
as  a  rule,  because  the  French  language  lacks  the 
dynamic  accent  of  Germanic  tongues.  These  young 
poets  in  England  are  linguists.  They  know  Latin 


100  THE   RELATION    OF 

and  Greek  to  start  with,  and  at  least  a  couple  of 
modern  languages  beside  their  own.  It  is  interesting 
to  think  that  Richard  Aldington  and  his  wife 
"H.  D.,"  read  Greek  together  for  their  amusement; 
and  every  language  is  a  new  window  through  which 
one  views  the  world.  When  you  read  these  poets 
who  are  working  in  England  and  those  others  in 
America  who  are  employing  the  same  fine  values  of 
stress  and  length  and  tone,  remember  that  they  with 
their  exquisitely  developed  sense  would  never  think 
of  the  harsh  stress  we  commonly  use  in  America. 
This  is  equally  applicable  to  the  finer,  subtler  kind 
of  music  that  we  recognize  as  ultramodern.  It  is 
one  of  the  peculiarities  of  modern  music  and  modern 
poetry  that  they  have  to  be  heard  and  not  seen. 
You  know  how  the  readers  in  a  publishing  house 
used  to  glance  over  a  new  score.  If  it  conformed 
to  what  the  reader  knew,  it  was  a  good  score ;  if  it 
was  something  he  was  not  yet  familiar  with,  it  was 
"wrong."  The  editor,  ignorant  of  the  creative 
spirit,  presumed  to  be  a  censor.  You  have  heard 
people  say,  "  It  is  n't  poetry  " ;  or,  "  It  is  n't  music." 
That  means  only  that  it  is  not  their  habit  of  music 
or  poetry,  and  Cyril  Scott  in  "  The  Philosophy  of 
Modernism  "  says,  "  In  art  perhaps  the  most  danger- 
ous enemy  is  habit";  and  again:  "Unfortunate  is 
the  creator  who  is  immediately  understood,  for  to 
be  thus  understood  often  means  not  to  be  worth 
understanding." 

I  doubt  if  any  age  has  great  value  in  itself.  The 
style  of  Couperin  has  been  successfully  imitated  by 
many  writers,  but  the  genius  of  Couperin  remains 
unique.  Surely  there  were  many  of  similar  style  in 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     101 

his  time,  but  only  the  best  survive.  That  will  be 
true  of  the  present-day  schools  as  well.  Who  could 
imitate  Blake?  Or  Cesar  Franck?  And  are  not  the 
publishing  houses  flooded  with  attempts  to  make 
the  whole-tone  scale  purr  in  gurgling  cadences  such 
as  Debussy's  genius  produced?  To  quote  Ezra 
Pound  again :  "  For  every  '  great  age '  a  few  poets 
have  written  a  few  beautiful  lines  or  found  a  few 
exquisite  melodies,  and  ten  thousand  people  have 
copied  them  until  each  strand  of  music  is  planed 
down  to  a  dullness."  When  you  hear  the  phrase, 
"It  isn't  music,  —  or  poetry,"  just  remember  that 
the  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare  and  Elizabeth  Barrett 
Browning  are  not  properly  sonnets  at  all.  Corson 
says  they  are  the  most  beautiful  love  poems  in  the 
language,  but  they  are  not  sonnets.  And  as  for 
Shakespeare,  there  is  n't  any  such  thing  as  the  sonnet 
rhyme  scheme  he  uses:  ab  ab  cd  cd  ef  ef  gg!  But 
why  should  there  be?  Who  makes  "forms"  but 
writers  themselves?  Certainly  not  schoolmasters 
and  publishing  house  readers! 

Max  Eastman  hopes  for  a  new  mode  of  approach, 
and  says,  in  his  book  "  The  Enjoyment  of  Poetry" : 
"  It  will  reveal  and  explain,  not  the  scholastic  con- 
ventions about  literary  structure,  nor  the  verbiage 
of  commentators,  but  the  substantial  values  that  are 
common  to  the  material  of  all  literature." 

Now,  as  Shakespeare  and  other  Elizabethans,  by 
virtue  of  their  birth  and  environment,  were  endowed 
with  other  varieties  of  inspiration,  of  a  genus  simi- 
lar to  that  of  Italian  sonneteers,  it  was  natural  that 
they  should  modify  the  form  their  muse  adopted. 
The  foster  parent  was  English  thought,  affecting 


102  THE   RELATION    OF 

perforce  the  development  of  the  alien  child  adopted. 
So  far  the  creative  artist  is  the  revelator  of  his  day. 

One  modern  characteristic  in  both  music  and 
poetry  is  Rhythm  as  distinct  from  Time.  In  1687 
Rousseau  said:  "Avoid  a  profusion  of  divisions 
which  only  disturb  the  tune  and  obscure  its  beauty. 
Mark  not  the  beat  too  much."  Couperin  in  1717 
said :  "  I  find  that  we  confuse  time  and  measure  with 
what  is  called  cadence  or  movement.  Measure  de- 
fines the  quantity,  the  equality ;  and  cadence  the  soul 
that  must  be  added."  Now  the  Imagistes  lay  great 
stress  on  cadence.  Fletcher  is  another  of  the  Imag- 
istes, not  delicate  like  H.  D.,  but  colorful  and  strong. 
It  is  not  my  intention  in  this  Conference  to  yoke 
one  poet  with  one  musician,  but  you  might  compare 
Fletcher  if  you  will  with  Moussorgski.  Fletcher's 
poem  "Lincoln"  has  the  quality  of  the  stronger 
work  of  Moussorgski.  It  is  not  pathetic  and  parti- 
san, like  the  musician  Tschaikowski  and  the  writer 
Tolstoy,  both  wasteful  of  words  and  personal.  John 
Butler  Yeats  would  have  said  of  those  older  ones 
that  they  could  not  get  away  from  their  self-im- 
portance. But  Moussorgski  throws  himself  into 
Boris  as  Fletcher  does  in  "Lincoln." 

There  is  often  in  great  creative  minds  a  lack  of 
compliance  with  the  demand  of  the  sequential  mind 
that  has  not  complete  vision.  If  it  is  not  too  great  a 
digression,  I  would  like  to  suggest  that  something 
akin  to  this  mental  state  of  realization,  or  the  elimi- 
nation of  the  sequential,  may  be  the  reason  for  the 
revolutionary  tendency  of  poets  and  musicians 
throughout  history.  The  habit  of  conceiving  and 
straightway  presenting  the  perfected  image  robs 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     103 

them  of  patience  with  the  slow  processes  of  develop- 
ment toward  perfection.  Realization,  as  Max  East- 
man so  truly  sets  forth  in  "The  Enjoyment  of 
Poetry,"  is  the  poet's  attitude  of  mind,  whereas  an- 
ticipation is  the  narrative  attitude.  The  one,  being 
nonsequential,  is  not  adapted  to  handling  mundane 
things.  Great  creative  artists  see  things  in  terms  of 
realization  instead  of  the  slow  terms  of  sequence. 
Freed  from  the  tyranny  of  the  symphonic  structure 
and  the  epic  ideal,  we  have  in  music  the  ellipsis  of 
harmonic  progression,  and  in  poetry  the  quick  per- 
ception of  the  image  without  the  cumbersome  lead- 
ing of  words  depicting  the  course  of  events.  Not 
that  directness  is  the  point,  but  the  whole  scene  at 
once:  an  evolution  of  consciousness.  If  the  vision 
presented  be  new  to  us,  so  much  the  better.  A 
Japanese,  or  Chinese  clear-cut,  timeless  presentation 
of  an  image  of  beauty,  when  regarded  in  the  light 
of  the  habit  of  clumsy  verbiage  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  appears  the  work  of  a  minor  poet  —  that 
most  disastrous  thing  to  be.  Scriabin's  Prelude 
No.  2  in  Opus  74,  his  last  work,  is  only  one  page 
long ;  but  to  know  it  is  an  experience.  In  poetry  of 
this  microcosmic  brand,  description  of  salient  fea- 
tures is  not  of  necessity  discarded,  however,  because 
the  artist  in  a  momentarily  timeless  state  of  ecstasy 
may  witness,  while  not  participating  in,  the  se- 
quential. A  program  representationally  conceived 
is  an  intellectual  shape,  a  product  of  the  reasoning 
mind,  as  indeed  it  must  be  while  portraying  the 
fleeting  aspects  of  things,  and  is  outside  the  realm 
of  ecstasy. 

For  apprehension  by  the  general  public,  Scriabin 


104  THE   RELATION    OF 

affords  to  the  habitual  hearing  but  one  "buttoning-on 
point,"  as  the  Germans  would  say.  That  is  the 
four-bar  phrase.  Erik  Satie,  abandoning  even  this 
concession  to  musical  custom,  as  well  as  tonality 
and  classified  rhythm,  grants  us  a  point  of  contact 
in  his  ecclesiastical  chord  sequences.  Like  children 
resting  on  a  small  familiar  idea,  we  accept  new 
concepts  as  we  grow  used  to  them.  Certain  poets 
give  us  the  externals  of  a  well-known  figure,  as 
Frost  presents  the  farmer  or  Sandborg  the  Chica- 
goan  or  H.  D.  a  tree,  leading  us  to  a  newness  of 
understanding  of  things  that  intrinsically  have  no 
novelty  for  us;  thus  fulfilling  the  duty  of  the  poet 
as  expressed  by  Sar  Peladan:  "L'art  se  doit  au 
mene  office  que  la  religion :  magnifier  I'element  divin 
dans  les  choses,  et  y  faire  participer  autrui."  It 
is  much  the  same  happy  broadening  of  concept  when 
Scriabin  leads  us  through  a  new  conception  of  the 
possibilities  of  enharmonic  relationship  in  a  tone, 
to  hear  new  overtones.  Another  American  poet 
gives  us  in  place  of  familiar  pictures,  a  new  group- 
ing of  things,  like  his  "songs  idling  at  the  street 
corners,"  or 

"  Golden  rose  the  house,  in  the  portal  I  saw  thee,  a 

marvel 

Carven  in  subtle  stuff,  a  portent. 
Life  died  down  in  the  lamp,  and  flickered, 
Caught  at  the  wonder." 

This  poet,  Ezra  Pound,  might  be  compared  with 
Stravinski,  in  quality  if  not  in  power  or  endurance. 
Whether  Pound  and  Remy  de  Gourmont  shared  the 
same  influence  that  made  them  both  uncouple  words 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     105 

that  had  long  gone  hand-in-hand,  or  whether  the 
older  man  transmitted  the  idea  to  the  younger,  it 
is  hard  to  say.  As  with  Yeats,  the  inner  vision  of 
Pound  acts  independently  of  what  is  usually  recog- 
nized or  usually  restricted.  If  sometimes,  like  a 
youth  who  resents  having  goodness  attributed  to 
him,  Pound  shows  what  Max  Eastman  would  call 
"  an  excessive  love  of  the  imaginative  realization  of 
what  is  normally  repulsive,"  this  is  never  picture- 
making  for  its  own  materialistic  sake.  It  merely 
shows  his  vision  so  far-reaching  that  he  is  inclusive 
rather  than  exclusive.  These  young  American  poets 
are  not  personal,  nor  are  the  young  English  poets 
who  are  their  confreres  in  the  modern  movement. 
Minor  artists  project  their  limited  persons  of  vanity 
upon  the  world.  Every  artist  in  his  time  is  likely  to 
be  called  a  minor  artist,  but  perhaps  the  best  test  of 
his  importance  is  this  quality  of  impersonality.  As 
Jane  Harrison  says  in  "  Ancient  Art  and  Ritual " : 
"  When  an  artist  claims  that  expression  is  the  aim 
of  art,  he  is  too  apt  to  mean  self-expression  only, 
utterance  of  individual  emotion.  Utterance  of  in- 
dividual emotion  is  very  closely  neighboured  by,  is 
almost  identical  with,  self-enhancement.  What 
should  be  a  generous,  and  in  part  altruistic,  exalta- 
tion becomes  mere  megalomania.  This  egotism  is, 
of  course,  a  danger  inherent  in  all  art.  The  sus- 
pension of  motor  reactions  to  the  practical  world 
isolates  the  artist,  cuts  him  off  from  his  fellow  men, 
makes  him  in  a  sense  an  egotist.  .  .  .  But  this 
suspension  is,  not  that  he  should  turn  inward  to  feed 
on  his  own  vitals,  but  rather  to  free  him  for  con- 
templation. All  great  art  releases  from  self."  As 


106  THE   RELATION    OF 

Goethe  said,  "  For  Beauty  they  have  sought  in  every 
age.  He  who  perceives  it  is  from  himself  set  free." 
Here  the  Orientals  are  in  advance  of  us  in  poetry. 
Even  a  thousand  years  ago,  Chinese  poets  instead 
of  hitting  their  readers  between  the  eyes,  used  a 
ricochet  of  suggestion;  and  the  modern  Japanese 
instead  of  saying,  "  I  see,"  or  "  I  behold  a  bamboo- 
tree  and  a  pool,"  will  say : 

"  A  slender  bamboo, 
And  a  pool." 

The  idea  is  that  if  the  reader's  absorption  into 
the  vision  is  deflected  by  the  poet's  personality,  the 
poet  has  not  fulfilled  his  purpose,  which  was  to 
make  the  reader  take  the  vision  as  his  own.  Picture- 
making,  then,  is  not  "  for  its  own  materialistic  sake," 
as  Eastman  says,  but  because  of  the  correspondence 
in  the  poet's  mind  between  the  planes  —  material, 
mental,  spiritual  (like  ice,  water,  steam  —  a  unit 
transmutable).  From  this  altitude,  objectivity  un- 
encumbered by  personal  reaction  becomes  the  highest 
subjectivity.  The  elimination  of  the  sequential,  the 
weeding  out  of  intermediate  steps  in  a  work  of  art, 
either  of  modern  poetry  or  music,  is  the  result  of 
this  mental  state:  the  state  of  realization,  —  all 
things  and  times  a  unit,  as  opposed  to  the  sequential 
or  consecutive.  It  is  another  plane  of  consciousness. 

The  great  talent  of  Amy  Lowell  is  not  on  this 
plane.  In  her  poetry  she  employs  skill  and  imagina- 
tion rather  than  that  vision  beyond  the  rational 
which  may  be  what  we  call  genius.  Miss  Lowell's 
sense  of  local  attachment  finds  its  parallel  on  the 
creative  plane.  Yet  where  shall  we  find  an  American 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     107 

musician  of  so  worthy  an  order  of  gifts  or  of 
achievement  ? 

In  rhythm  Tschaikowski  is  a  precursor  to  Stra- 
vinski,  by  reason  of  the  synchronous  opposition  of 
the  metrical  forms:  the  pattern  and  the  phrase  at 
variance,  or  sometimes  the  pattern  and  the  meter. 
This  rhythmic  element  of  synchronous  diversity 
which  might  seem  to  us  to  have  arisen  in  Russia, 
is  more  probably  an  Eastern-European  relic  of  what 
Stumpf  calls  "  Heterophonie,"  the  simultaneous 
rendering  of  a  melody  and  its  variations,  a  feature 
of  certain  Oriental  music  even  at  the  present  time.1 

Tschaikowski  felt  the  customary  major  and  minor 
modes  as  the  natural  material  of  tonal  arrangement. 
In  this  regard  he  was  European,  not  Asiatic ;  while 
with  respect  to  tonality  the  later  Russians,  Mous- 
sorgski,  Stravinski,  Scriabin,  possess  an  inner  hear- 
ing as  uncontaminated  by  custom  of  outer  hearing  as 
is  the  inner  vision  of  Yeats  by  the  sights  of  the  world. 
The  salient  features  of  modern  music  as  opposed  to 
that  of  previous  centuries  appear  to  me  to  be  aris- 
tocracy of  rhythmic  concept  or  freedom  from  the 
peasant  dance-beat;  new  rhythmic  patterns,  largely 
drawn  from  the  obsolete  and  the  exotic ;  new  funda- 
mental tone-arrangements  (modes) ;  new  enhar- 
monic tone-arrangements  (relations)  ;  new  elisions; 
the  repetition  of  an  integral  pattern  as  a  motive ;  the 
free  use  or  the  elimination  of  "development,"  and 
a  surcease  from  legalized,  even  obligatory  re- 
dundancy. 

"One  of  the  characteristics  of  Russian  novelists 

1  "A  Study  of  Rhythm  in  Primitive  Music,"  Chas.  Myers. 
British  Journal  of  Psychology,  1904-05. 


108  THE    RELATION    OF 

is  their  power  of  supplying  the  atmosphere  necessary 
to  understand  their  work,"  I  read  in  the  London 
Outlook  of  May  28,  1917.  Their  medium  of  words 
seems  to  the  musician  all  disadvantage.  Poets,  how- 
ever free  their  thought,  play  always  with  a  captive 
ball.  The  word,  however  new  in  its  sense  to  the 
poet,  has  a  well-worn  connotation  in  the  reader's 
mind.  Yet  if  the  creative  artist  wants  a  definite 
concept,  the  word  is  the  best  medium  short  of  rep- 
resentational painting.  Greatly  as  I  admire  Mr. 
Frederick  Manning,  his  poem  "Demeter  Mourn- 
ing" is  an  indispensable  example  of  the  "captive 
ball."  Prohibition  must  be  more  popularly  ratified 
before  a  poet  can  speak  with  impunity  of  the  "  cold 
grey  dawn":1 

I  have  seen  her  in  sorrow,  as  one  blind 
With  grief,  across  the  furrows  on  soiled  feet 

Pass,  as  the  cold  grey  dawn  came  with  cold  wind, 
Grey  as  fine  steel  and  keen  with  bitter  sleet, 

Beneath  the  white  moon  waning  in  the  skies : 

And  I  grew  holy  gazing  in  her  eyes. 

Never  mind  if  immediate  results  are  not  forth- 
coming. Blake  and  Shelley  and  the  Pre-Raphaelites 
and  Impressionists  and  Burne-Jones  and  Whistler 
were  for  the  greater  part  of  their  lives  unrecognized 
or  mocked.  Let  us  not  forget  that  John  Milton's 
brother  requested  him  politely  to  change  his  name. 
The  qualitative  standard  is  the  only  gauge  for  the 
artist.  Ralph  Adams  Cram  speaks  wisely  of  the 

1  In  Paris  in  the  Qp's  an  excellent  French  Opera  was  put 
on  the  shelf  because  its  chief  theme  chanced  to  be  identical 
with  the  new  popular  tune  Tar-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.  From  such 
instances  I  would  intensify  the  plea  for  positive  fundamental 
tone  arrangement  and  rare  rhythms  as  the  material  worthy  of 
a  gifted  composer  who  essays  the  expression  of  great  thoughts. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     109 

fallacy  of  the  quantitative  standard,  in  his  illumin- 
ating book,  "  The  Great  Thousand  Years." 

We  have  had  quantity  until  in  our  revulsion  from 
diffuseness  we  are  impatient  of  everything  more 
redundant  than  the  sign.  Is  the  fact  not  indicative 
that  we  are  ready  to  return  to  the  symbol  ?  As  Jane 
Harrison  says  in  "  Ancient  Art  and  Ritual "  (p.  207) , 
"  Art  in  these  latter  days,  goes  back  as  it  were,  on 
her  own  steps,  recrossing  the  ritual  bridge  back  to 
life."  For  Art,  "  coming  out  of  a  perception  of  un- 
known things,"  is  ready  in  this  new  age  to  complete 
a  cycle  and  return  to  its  source,  whence,  in  the  great 
Rhythm,  it  must  again  emerge. 

The  Parallels  I  find  in  modern  music  and  modern 
poetry  are  nine: 

1.  Exotic  themes  with  exotic  treatment. 

2.  Negation  of  the  Sequential. 

3.  Elimination  of  Intermediate  Steps. 

4.  New  basic  arrangements  of  material. 

5.  Patterns  and  Runes  in  place  of  tunes. 

6.  Freedom  from  the  Peasant  dance-beat. 

7.  Grandiloquence  to  the  ash  heap. 

8.  The  aural  appeal  instead  of  the  visual. 

9.  The  effect  upon  the  critic. 

Nine,  like  the  Muses !  Dining  one  evening  with  a 
Prelate  of  the  Eastern  Catholic  Church,  I  turned  and 
asked  my  host,  "  If  there  were  a  tenth  Muse,  what 
would  it  be  ?  "  Like  a  flash  he  answered,  "  Apprecia- 
tion ! "  Let  us  say,  then,  that  our  tenth  Parallel  is 
Freedom  guided  by  the  Tenth  Muse.  That  means 
in  its  essence,  New  Values,  and  Alertness.  So  we 
come  back  to  the  requisites  of  all  art-creation,  Sen- 
sitiveness, Self-knowledge  and  Sympathy. 


110  THE   RELATION    OF 


SCRIABIN 

HOW  long  it  takes  the  light  of  fame  to  travel 
down  the  side  of  Mount  Humanity  from  the 
peaks  that  first  catch  the  rays  of  greatness  to  the 
broad  base  at  the  earth  level!  Even  in  his  home 
town,  Moscow,  that  he  loved,  Alexander  Scriabin 
was  not  whole-heartedly  recognized  until  after  his 
death. 

Parents,  teachers,  friends  —  these  sum  up  a  man's 
life.  The  first  two  are  the  occasion  of  his  inclina- 
tions and  opportunities.  The  last  of  the  three 
factors  in  a  man's  life  —  his  friends  —  are  the  re- 
sults of  inclination  and  opportunity,  and  their 
further  cause.  When  you  know  about  the  parents, 
the  teachers  and  the  friends  of  Scriabin,  you  will 
understand  how  the  Light  shining  through  him  was 
broken  up  into  the  colours  that  we  call  his  music. 

It  is  almost  an  impertinence  to  write  on  the  sub- 
ject of  Alexander  Scriabin  when  Dr.  A.  Eaglefield 
Hull  has  given  us  so  perfect  a  result  of  what  clearly 
was  a  labour  of  love,  in  his  book  "  A  Great  Russian 
Tone-poet  —  Scriabin." 

Alexander  Nikolaivitch  Scriabin  was  born  on 
Christmas  Day,  1871,  in  Moscow,  in  the  house  of 
the  old  Colonel  his  grandfather.  The  young  mother, 
a  pupil  of  Leschetitzki,  and  Gold  Medalist  at  the 
Petrograd  Conservatory,  was  such  a  child  that,  as 
Dr.  Hull  says,  "the  young  couple  did  not  number 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     111 

forty  years  between  them."  When  her  baby  was 
two  years  old  the  little  mother  died;  but  the  child 
was  brought  up  in  his  own  family. 

In  Scriabin  we  have  a  rare  example  of  the  record- 
ing memory,  and  the  still  more  rare  instance  of  the 
ripening  of  such  a  mind  into  great  artistic  origi- 
nality. When  the  boy  was  five  he  could  play  with- 
out a  mistake  the  smaller  classics  of  a  couple  of 
pages,  after  hearing  them  once.  At  the  age  of 
eight  he  composed;  he  wrote  poems;  he  had  a 
mechanical  sense  that  led  him  through  carpentering 
to  the  manufacture  of  miniature  pianos.  Now  if 
you  regard  these  gifts  separately  and  synthetically 
you  will  see  that  they  point  to  an  intuitive  sense  of 
form.  This  sense  of  form  remained  with  him  so 
perfectly  that  in  his  later  compositions,  except  for 
the  runes  he  employed,  it  might  be  called  his  only 
material,  almost  summoning  the  tones  to  their  in- 
evitable places.  The  sense  of  accuracy,  a  relic  of 
the  early  scientific  training,  is  so  impeccable  that  in 
his  most  complex  compositions  a  note  cannot  be 
fumbled  and  the  right  one  imagined,  as  may  happen 
in  compositions  of  the  old  school.  If  one  note  is 
out,  the  whole  sequence  is  gone.  Thanks  to  his  inner 
development,  the  strong  mnemonic  gift  of  Scriabin 
never  acted  to  his  disadvantage.  Had  he  developed 
a  manner,  like  Debussy,  the  old  material  would  have 
been  repeatedly  used.  But  unlike  the  French  com- 
poser whose  fame  is  coeval  with  that  of  Scriabin 
and  whose  popularity  is  more  general,  the  Russian 
went  back  to  the  mainsprings  of  art  for  his  in- 
spiration. For  this  reason  we  have  the  continuous 
growth  of  Scriabin  in  his  music,  and  the  waning  of 


112  THE    RELATION    OF 

Debussy's  power.  Under  the  old  regime  in  Russia 
the  sons  of  officers  were  gratuitously  educated  at  a 
military  school ;  so  Alexander  Scriabin  from  the  age 
of  nine  to  his  sixteenth  year  was  learning  what  an 
officer  and  a  gentleman  was  supposed  to  know,  and 
was  studying  music  as  well.  Of  the  two  teachers, 
Conus  and  Zvierieff,  we  have  no  knowledge  in  this 
country;  Taneieff  we  know  through  compositions 
that  have  been  played  in  New  York,  and  from  the 
fact  that  he  was  the  teacher  of  the  brilliant  young 
recipient  of  the  Berkshire  Quartette  Prize  in  1918, 
Tadeusz  de  Jarecki.  A  very  distinguished  teacher 
of  Scriabin  was  Safonoff,  who  understood  him,  pro- 
tected him,  and  encouraged  him.  Just  as  every 
artist  in  the  course  of  his  career  wears  out  the 
patience  of  more  than  one  patron,  so  as  a  student  he 
passes  through  the  vicissitudes  of  association  with 
teachers  of  various  degrees  of  greatness  and  under- 
standing. Arenski  was  one  teacher  of  Alexander 
Scriabin  —  the  one  teacher  who  never  saw,  during 
their  association  or  afterwards,  any  reason  for  his 
becoming  a  musician.  During  the  single  term  that 
he  studied  with  Arenski  he  had  met  a  real  patron, 
the  kind  that  makes  a  country  known  for  its  art. 
That  patron  was  Belaieff  the  music  publisher,  whose 
house  was  devoted  exclusively  to  Russian  composers. 
Belaieff  published  all  of  Scriabin's  Symphonies,  at 
the  outset  putting  the  young  composer  at  financial 
ease,  which  enabled  him  to  do  his  best  work,  and  this 
friendship  was  severed  only  by  the  death  of  Belaieff 
in  1904  after  thirteen  years  of  association. 

In  Dr.  Hull's  book  you  will  find  such  scholarly 
and  detailed  accounts  of  the  five  symphonies,  the  ten 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     113 

sonatas,  and  a  great  number  of  the  four  hundred 
compositions  left  by  Scriabin,  that  I  will  only  speak 
in  this  Conference  from  the  personal  point  of  view 
of  certain  compositions  that  interest  me  particularly; 
and  perhaps  going  on  from  those  you  will  find  others 
that  will  be  of  more  individual  interest  to  you. 
There  are  of  course  the  pieces  for  the  left  hand 
which  you  have  doubtless  already  heard.  Those 
were  written  while  the  lad  had  a  broken  right  col- 
larbone. Then  the  Boston  Music  Company  has 
published  certain  .numbers  of  Opus  8  that  have  an 
unusual  rhythmic  interest.  The  one  in  B  minor,  for 
example,  which  is  number  3,  is  written  in  a  time  of 
6/8  and  a  rhythm  of  3/4.  By  the  rhythm  I  mean 
the  little  rhythmic  pattern  or  mould,  that  little  pattern 


of  two  notes     Ijfk       rfl-     which  is  given  its  char- 


acteristic  curve  by  the  corresponding  use  of  the  fore- 
arm. I  mean  to  say,  the  curve  \^/  represented  by 
that  little  group  of  two  notes  is  made  audible  when 
the  wrist  in  its  motion  portrays  that  curve.  To 
speak  didactically,  the  action  of  the  wrist  would  be 
Down,  up,  Down,  up,  Down,  up,  making  three  little 
curves  in  the  six  eighth-notes,  which  is  the  rhythmic 
pattern.  If  you  desire  the  metrical  accent  as  well, 
it  is  easy  enough  in  the  end  to  put  a  little  spark  of 
a  high  light  wherever  you  want  it.  This  etude  is  a 
lovely  example  of  cross-rhythm,  and  in  the  middle 
movement  that  use  of  the  left  wrist  making  the 
rhythmic  pattern  in  the  bass  will  keep  the  whole 
design  clear. 

The  other  etude,  Opus  8,  is  in  B  flat  minor,  for 


114  THE    RELATION    OF 

when  he  wrote  these,  Scriabin  was  a  young  boy 
in  his  teens  and  had  not  yet  advanced  beyond  the 
customary  scale-material  of  music.  This  etude  in 
B  flat,  No.  7,  in  Opus  8,  has  straight  4/4  time 
in  the  treble  —  four  chords  to  the  bar.  But  the 
bass  is  12/8;  and  its  pattern  is  such  that  it  is  the 
third  of  each  group  of  three  that  comes  with  each 
metrical  beat.  This  again,  as  in  the  etude  previously 
mentioned,  necessitates  a  gesture  to  facilitate  the 
automatic  rendition  of  the  rhythmic  pattern.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  this  principle  is  indispensable  if  one 
would  give  the  peculiar  quality  of  divers  tones  and 
complex  rhythms  which  we  know  as  modern  music. 

Scriabin  wrote  ten  pianoforte  sonatas.  The  fifth 
is  famous  because  it  is  said  to  mark  an  era  in  his 
work ;  for,  like  Corot,  he  had  sharply  defined  periods. 
I  do  not  mean  roughly  defined,  because  there  was 
gradual  and  uninterrupted  development;  but  that 
development  made  itself  manifest  at  definite  stages. 
The  fourth  sonata  is  Opus  30.  It  is  written  in  F 
sharp  major;  and  together  with  the  Divine  Poem  or 
Third  Symphony,  the  Tragedy,  the  Poeme  Satan- 
ique  and  some  forty  other  pieces,  it  was  written  in 
the  year  1904.  These  were  songs  of  freedom  after 
giving  up  a  professorship  at  the  Moscow  Con- 
servatory, where  Scriabin  had  reluctantly  taught 
during  six  arid  years. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  pedagogues.  There  is  the 
kind  that  has  educated  itself  to  teach  and  is  going 
to  teach  to  the  end  of  the  chapter  just  what  it 
originally  educated  itself  to  know.  That  kind  of 
pedagogue  protects  itself  from  the  invasion  of  all 
new  ideas  and  is  as  great  an  enemy  to  the  progress 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     115 

of  art  as  is  the  sordidly  commercial  middleman.  The 
other  kind  of  pedagogue  walks  not  with  his  own 
little  lamp  ahead  of  the  pupil,  but  with  the  burning 
glass  of  love  for  Art  he  focuses  its  blinding  rays 
anew  each  day  the  sun  shines.  Thus  the  leader- 
spirit  Scriabin  had  both  friends  and  enemies.  In 
connection  with  this  matter  of  Scriabin's  enemies 
one  may  recall  the  fact  of  mediocrity's  instant  ap- 
peal. In  Scriabin's  most  original  work,  that  is  to 
say,  after  self-knowledge  and  illumination  had  sup- 
planted his  strong  mnemonic  gift,  there  is  nothing 
in  his  composition  to  flatter  our  vanity.  Even  if  we 
accept  the  music  for  the  worth  that  our  sense  of 
form  and  our  artistic  discrimination  discern,  we  are 
baffled  at  times ;  and  we  may  feel  ourselves  belittled 
by  our  lack  of  understanding.  The  form  is  so  per- 
fect, the  meaning  is  so  fine,  and  it  is  all  done  with 
such  conviction  and  disregard  of  approval,  that  we 
are  reminded  of  what  the  critic  Alfred  Stevens 
wrote  in  the  nineteenth  century :  "  Painting  is  not 
done  for  exhibitions.  Refined  work  is  smothered 
and  shouters  come  off  better."  Scriabin  never 
painted  a  "  shouter." 

In  this  Conference  I  am  confining  myself  to  the 
piano  music  almost  exclusively  because  it  is  only 
ten  years  since  the  completion  of  the  last  Symphony, 
and  it  will  probably  be  another  quarter  of  a  century 
or  so  before  our  publishing  houses  and  our  or- 
chestras get  round  to  producing  the  Symphonies. 
The  handful  of  people  in  a  community  who  cherish 
for  art  an  interest  that  is  not  purely  local,  will  not 
require  me  for  a  guidepost.  They  will  go  direct 
to  Dr.  Hull  for  the  deeper  information  he  can  give 


116  THE    RELATION    OF 

with  regard  to  the  orchestral  works.  The  piano 
literature  itself,  numbering  about  two  hundred 
pieces,  is  sufficient  to  engage  the  interest  of  the 
musician  for  a  little  while.  There  is  a  Prelude  in 
Opus  51  in  which  Scriabin  has  utilized  but  not  used 
an  old  church  mode,  the  Dorian.  You  will  remem- 
ber the  lovely  quality  the  minor  second  gives,  and 
the  harmonies  that  grow  out  of  that  scale,  but  in 
case  the  application  of  this  almost  theoretical  mem- 
ory is  not  easy  for  you  yet  in  the  new-old  music, 
let  me  recall  the  scale  to  you  in  its  divergence  from 
our  usual  mode.  This  is  the  Dorian :  E  F  G  A  | 
B  CD  E. 

Scriabin's  familiarity  with  the  Greek  modes  was 
a  matter  of  course,  and  he  used  them  in  early  com- 
positions. So  here  he  made  a  beautiful  scale,  a 
version  of  our  well-known  minor  scale,  by  combin- 
ing the  Dorian  lower  tetrachord  with  the  Chroma- 
tique-Orientale  tetrachord  superposed. 


X 

Tonic. 


The  upper  half  is  identical  with  our  harmonic  minor. 
This  is  equally  valid  from  the  standpoint  of  logic 
and  of  beauty  with  our  well-known  arrangement 


r 


which,  as  you  will  see,  is  the  Phrygian  lower  tetra- 
chord with  the  upper  tetrachord  Chromatique- 
Orientale.  This  Prelude  is  designated  Lugubre  and 
is  Opus  51. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     117 

A  musical  creator  may  have  various  things  to  offer 
us.  He  may  give  us  new  thematic  material  or  new 
harmonic  material  or  new  rhythmic  material.  Scria- 
bin  has  given  us  all  three.  Is  it  the  man  or  the  artist 
who  has  done  that?  The  quality  of  the  man  and 
the  quality  of  his  work  are  so  related  that  a  presenta- 
tion of  either  would  proclaim  the  other.  Inspiration 
is  inevitably  coloured  by  what  it  passes  through,  like 
light  through  glass. 

Now  at  the  time  Scriabin  died,  in  April,  1915,  he 
was  at  work  on  what  he  called  a  Mystery.  It  was  a 
high  ritual.  Scriabin  was  a  deeply  religious  person 
who  recognized  that  the  need  of  humanity  is  for 
illumination  —  more  light  coming  through  —  or  a 
higher  plane  of  consciousness.  That  idea  is  always 
a  little  objectionable  to  our  vanity.  We  prefer  to 
say  that  animals  cannot  reason,  rather  than  admit 
that  we  must  take  the  trouble  to  do  something  more. 
A  celebrated  doctor  in  Europe  told  me  that  at  a 
medical  conference  in  Berlin  the  much  advertised 
ant  was  being  exploited  as  a  marvel  of  intelligence. 
Referring  to  my  friend  for  acquiescence  in  the  high 
esteem  in  which  the  medical  company  held  the  insect, 
this  doctor  startled  the  company  by  saying  that  the 
attainments  of  the  ant  only  proved  to  him  how  far 
humanity  had  yet  to  go.  As  you  know,  this  further 
journey  into  realms  of  higher  consciousness  has 
been  undertaken  by  various  groups  of  people 
throughout  the  world,  calling  themselves  by  differ- 
ent names.  The  Rosicrucians  are  one  of  these 
groups;  the  Theosophists  form  another;  the  Chris- 
tian Scientists  have  taken  an  inspirational  short- 
cut ;  and  the  group  under  the  leadership  of  Rudolph 


118  THE    RELATION    OF 

Steiner  have  undertaken  their  development  along 
the  trail  of  Mystical  Christianity.  The  Zen  sect  of 
the  Buddhists  are  most  profound.  They  have  amaz- 
ing technique,  and  certainly  some  of  their  devotees 
are  saints.  But  to  know  their  mental  activities  is  to 
realize  the  world's  need  of  Christianity  as  a  religion 
of  Love. 

Scriabin  was  a  Theosophist ;  and  the  composition 
on  which  he  was  at  work  at  the  time  of  his  sudden 
death,  called  the  Mystery,  was  to  be  a  union  of 
music,  speech,  gesture,  scent  and  colour.  The  "  pas- 
sive initiates"  as  he  termed  the  audience,  were  to 
participate,  and  the  purpose  of  the  composition  was 
to  engender  in  the  hearers  that  state  of  mind  in 
which  they  might  have  a  vision  of  the  higher  planes 
of  consciousness  we  hope  to  call  our  own.  Some- 
thing of  this  sort  is  undoubtedly  at  the  back  of  our 
common  phrase  that  music  exalts  us,  or  that  it  is  an 
uplifting  influence,  or  that  we  are  the  better  for 
having  heard  it.  Scriabin's  idea  in  calling  the 
audience  "  passive  initiates  "  is  akin  to  the  thought 
in  the  mind  of  Coomaraswami,  when  in  speaking  of 
music  in  India  he  says,  "The  audience  cooperates 
with  the  magician."  It  is  not  often,  is  it,  in  the 
music  of  the  past  three  centuries,  and  its  public 
performance,  that  we  could  employ  the  word  "  magi- 
cian "  where  we  use  "musician" !  Even  the  cadenza, 
originally  born  of  ecstasy,  is  nowadays  published 
and  bought.  The  Oriental  idea  referred  to  by 
Coomaraswami  and  brought  into  our  music  by  Scria- 
bin is  doubtless  the  basic  principle  of  ancient  ritual 
music,  whether  church  ritual  or  nature  ritual, 
whether  Christian  Transcendentalism  or  Natural 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     119 

Magic.  In  both  instances,  objects  in  the  world  are 
employed  not  for  what  they  appear  to  be,  but  in 
their  essence,  of  which  the  outer  manifestation  is 
but  a  symbol.  It  is  obvious  that  if  there  is  power 
in  music,  the  musician  should  be  trained  as  an 
initiate,  for  if  material  power  can  be  basely  used, 
how  much  more  important  is  it  to  be  worthy  of 
power  from  invisible  springs !  Is  it  not  worth  while 
to  think  of  things  on  which  Plato  and  Confucius 
agree  ? 

Challenged  for  my  estimate  of  Debussy,  I  would 
like  to  submit  this  parallel.  Debussy  was  born  in 
1862.  For  thirty-eight  years  he  lived  in  a  decadent 
France  of  the  end  of  the  last  century.  He  died  in 
1918.  Born  ten  years  after  Debussy,  Scriabin  at 
•the  end  of  the  century  had  lived  twenty-eight  years 
in  Russia,  a  land  then  full  of  surging  idealism. 
Where  France  was  infidel,  turning  out  her  holy  men 
and  women,  Russia  was  seeking  the  transcendental 
by  means  of  every  man  who  had  a  vision.  "  Cults  " 
sprang  up,  a  new  cult  for  each  individual  revelation, 
each  one  a  tongue  of  the  great  upward-flaming  con- 
sciousness. Why,  so  general  was  the  grouping  of 
those  who  were  seeking  something  higher,  that  when 
I  did  an  ordinarily  gracious  deed  for  a  fellow  artist, 
a  Russian  literary  woman,  she  asked  me  if  I  were 
a  "sectarian,"  one  who  had  founded  a  cult.  In  every 
land  the  citizen  inhales  his  atmosphere  as  the  plant 
is  nourished  by  the  air  about  it.  So  Debussy  adopted 
a  manner,  and  Scriabin  grew  into  spiritual  freedom. 
Debussy's  last  works  were,  accordingly,  a  feebler 
expression  of  his  early  thoughts,  while  Scriabin's 
were  a  fuller  flowering. 


120  THE   RELATION    OF 

In  Russia  there  has  been  since  ancient  times  a 
sect  called  Khlisti,  and  they  have  invocational  chants, 
series  of  notes  that  represent  the  elements.  If  I  may 
intrude  a  personal  reminiscence,  let  me  tell  you  of 
going  into  a  London  concert  hall  one  afternoon  dur- 
ing the  progress  of  a  song  recital.  Mme.  Jarebzova 
of  Petrograd  was  singing  something  strangely 
familiar.  I  said,  "  Surely  that  is  the  earth-motiv ! " 
Looking  at  the  program,  I  found  that  it  was  entitled, 
"  Ritual  Song  of  the  Sect  Khlisti,  harmonized  by 
Stravinski " ;  and  it  was  an  invocation  for  rain.  I 
am  not  sufficiently  familiar  with  the  works  of  Stra- 
vinski, since  we  have  such  small  opportunity  of  hear- 
ing important  new  music,  to  determine  from  his  use 
of  such  material  whether  the  basis  he  is  working 
from  is  mystical  or  only  mental,  —  I  mean,  whether 
he  is  inspired  or  only  clever.  I  have  been  assured 
that  his  sole  interest  outside  of  his  music  is  in  his 
wife  and  children,  but  this  reputation  might  be  the 
very  result  of  his  pursuit  of  things  so  fundamental 
and  so  profound  that  their  names  are  kept  inviolate. 
Now  whether  Scriabin  drew  the  motivs  that  he  used 
in  his  Eighth  Sonata  from  the  Russian  sect  Khlisti, 
or  from  other  shrines  in  which  they  had  been  con- 
served, I  have  no  means  of  knowing;  but  there  are 
just  five  short  motivs  used  as  the  basis  of  his  Eighth 
Sonata,  and  some  of  them  are  familiar  as  nature 
motivs  taught  me  by  an  initiate  in  London.  The 
Eighth  Sonata  when  properly  rendered  gives  one  a 
curious  feeling  of  being  out  of  doors ;  and  if  I  am 
correct,  these  five  short  motivs  are  the  runes,  ac- 
cording to  tradition  given  to  Scriabin  from  one 
source  or  another,  of  the  five  elements. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     121 


All  through  the  Sonata  these  musical  phrases  are 
the  sole  material  used,  and  on  the  last  page  they  are 
made  prominent  to  even  the  casual  observer: 


122 


THE    RELATION    OF 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     123 

Incidentally,  Scriabin  wrote  ten  Sonatas:  and 
although  the  number  may  have  been  a  chance,  it 
may  also  have  been,  since  he  was  a  Theosophist, 
that  the  ten  Sonatas  conform  in  some  way  to  the 
ten  Sephiroth  of  the  Qabalah.  In  that  event  each 
Sonata  would  have  a  separate  role  to  play  on  the 
stage  of  creation.  Scriabin  realized  the  brutality 
of  the  world  of  sense  and  the  great  range  of  beauty 
to  be  perceived  by  the  awakened  soul.  Reticent  and 
aristocratic,  and  loving  his  native  town,  he  was  pre- 
vented by  the  jeering  attitude  of  its  professional 
musicians  from  living  and  working  there.  A  Jap- 
anese artist  leaving  this  country  for  his  home,  after 
four  years  of  employment  by  a  New  York  merchant 
of  art,  was  asked  on  the  day  of  his  departure,  by 
his  employer,  how  his  work  should  be  carried  on. 
The  Japanese  replied:  "Everything  that  I  have 
learned  in  this  shop  is  noted  and  is  in  the  hands  of 
your  secretary:  five  pages.  I  have  written  down 
for  them  what  mediums  are  to  be  used  for  every- 
thing. Also  I  mentioned  how  to  treat  the  artists, 
as  artists  treat  the  mediums." 

Scriabin  had  married  —  with  success  that  left 
much  to  be  desired.  He  had  made  professional  tours 
through  Europe  and  Russia  and  even  to  America  in 
1906  and  1907,  but  his  value  was  never  generally 
perceived.  In  January,  1908,  he  wrote  the  glowing 
Poeme  d'Extase :  and  in  Brussels  the  great  score  of 
Prometheus,  which  was  the  Fifth  Symphony,  and 
several  smaller  things  were  written  in  his  latest 
manner  that  had  a  mystic  basis  of  vibrational  design. 
Among  these  latest  compositions  was  the  Etude 
Opus  65,  —  sharp,  scintillant  like  bright  bits  of 


124  THE    RELATION    OF 

broken  glass.  To  the  pianist  let  me  say  that  this 
species  of  piano  composition  has  to  be  rendered  with 
the  light,  flat,  fleet,  coordinated  movement  of  hand 
and  arm  that  has  been  popularized  during  the  past 
two  seasons  by  the  pianist  Robert  Schmitz. 

Scriabin's  composition  was  done  largely  in  Brus- 
sels and  in  Switzerland.  The  Brussels  period  was  of 
especial  interest.  From  1908  he  had  two  years  of 
close  association  with  certain  other  fine  minds  en- 
gaged in  delving  beneath  the  surface,  such  men  as 
Verhaeren,  Delville,  Mahrhofer;  indeed,  if  I  may 
quote  from  a  letter  from  Dr.  Hull,  "There  was  a 
remarkable  school  for  the  New  Art  at  Brussels  dur- 
ing the  time  of  Scriabin's  residence  there."  With 
this  in  mind,  let  us  in  New  York  not  deceive  our- 
selves into  thinking  that  a  city  is  a  musical  metrop- 
olis because  artists  have  honoured  its  market  with 
their  wares. 

During  Scriabin's  residence  in  Brussels  he  mar- 
ried the  loyal  woman  who  survives  him.  I  am  told 
by  Mr.  La  Liberte  of  Montreal,  an  erstwhile  pupil 
of  Scriabin's,  that  his  widow  is  publishing  a  collec- 
tion of  all  manner  of  things  appertaining  to  her 
distinguished  husband.  The  appearance  of  this  book 
will  be  of  particular  interest  in  throwing  more  light 
on  this  original  composer  than  his  friends  have 
been  able  to  supply. 

It  has  been  said  among  artists,  and  it  is  true,  that 
beauty  should  never  be  explained.  They  mean  that 
it  should  be  apprehended  with  another  sense  than  the 
analytical.  I  think  it  is  G.  R.  S.  Mead  in  his  volume 
of  Essays  called  "Quests  Old  and  New"  who  re- 
minds us  of  the  essential  difference  between  analysis 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     125 

and  sympathy.  "In  sympathy,"  he  says  —  I  quote 
from  memory  —  "or  feeling  with  the  other,  we 
project  ourselves  into  its  being,  knowing  it  as  it 
is;  whereas  in  analysis  we  try  to  compress  the 
strange  thing  into  a  preconceived  sense-experience, 
into  which  by  its  very  nature  it  cannot  fit."  So,  with 
persistent  use  of  the  analytical  faculty  we  are  con- 
tinually the  losers.  Great  new  beauty  has  been  born 
into  the  world  in  the  past  twenty  years,  since  the 
year  1900,  and  I  will  not  attempt  to  explain  it.  Your 
receptive  attitude  will  give  you  more  than  any  words 
of  analysis  could  do.  There  is  a  complete  literature 
for  the  pianoforte  left  by  Scriabin.  In  less  than 
nine  months  of  the  year  1903,  you  remember,  he 
wrote  the  published  works  from  Opus  30  to  Opus  43, 
comprising  the  Fourth  Pianoforte  Sonata,  the 
Tragedy,  the  Poeme  Satanique,  the  Divine  Sym- 
phony and  some  forty  small  pieces. 

The  very  first  works  written  when  a  child  are 
published  by  Jorgenson  of  Moscow.  The  first  three 
Opus  numbers  are  an  Iitude,  a  Prelude,  an  Im- 
promptu and  Ten  Mazurkas;  and  rarely  was  there 
a  published  Opus  of  a  solitary  composition.  Un- 
fortunately Scriabin  was  not  always  under  the 
tutelage  of  the  greater  pedagogues.  Safonoff  was 
a  good  man,  and  Taneieff,  in  spite  of  the  traditional 
limitations  of  his  own  original  work,  was  generous 
in  refraining  from  extending  those  limitations  over 
the  consciousness  of  his  students.  But  Arenski,  that 
unfortunate  house  divided  against  itself,  that  man 
of  genius  who  wrote  the  beautiful  pianoforte  con- 
certo Opus  2.  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  and  whose 
Opus  28  was  a  series  of  musical  experiments  in  half 


126  THE   RELATION    OF 

a  dozen  forgotten  rhythms  of  Greek,  Roman  and 
Persian  poetry  —  Arenski  from  the  standpoint  of 
progressively  revelatory  art  was  so  limited  a  re- 
actionary and  so  devoted  to  harmonic  convention, 
that  he  found  no  talent  in  his  genius  pupil,  Scriabin, 
who  viewed  a  farther  horizon.  While  Belaieff  and 
Safonoff  and  Kussewitzsky  encouraged  and  fostered 
his  work,  Arenski  was  of  that  caliber  of  professional 
whose  envious  opposition  continued  up  to  April  14, 
I9I5^  when  the  death  of  Scriabin  united  enemies 
and  friends  in  proud  lamentation  and  a  large  and 
enjoyable  funeral. 

The  vital  difference  between  Scriabin  and  the 
usual  composer  lies  in  the  content  of  his  art  work. 
He  does  not  present  the  human-emotional  element, 
nor  does  he  exhibit  vain  patterns  like  Schoenberg. 
His  first  Symphony  was  a  Hymn  to  Art,  the  flutter- 
ing of  his  wings  toward  God.  The  Third  Symphony 
was  the  Divine  Poem;  and  the  Fifth  Symphony, 
Prometheus,  was  the  spreading  of  those  great  wings 
on  which  he  hoped  to  bear  humanity  upward  and 
out  over  the  borders  of  this  fettered  earth  life. 
Hull  writes :  "  With  him  we  are  indeed  brought  near 
to  the  Infinite  and  we  do  indeed  'gaze  across  the 
cloudy  elements  into  the  Eternal  Sea  of  Light.' ' 
I  did  not  know  these  phrases  when  I  heard  his 
Poeme  d'Extase  played  by  Mr.  Altschuler  and  the 
Russian  Symphony  Orchestra  in  New  York.  There 
may  be  various  ways  of  accounting  for  the  phenome- 
non, but  the  fact  is  there,  that  both  my  companion 
and  I,  listening  with  closed  eyes,  saw  during  the 
ecstatic  climax  of  that  orchestral  composition,  the 
Poem  of  Ecstasy,  a  sea  of  molten  gold  on  which 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     127 

there  floated  a  ship  of  violet  light,  immaterial,  super- 
natural. I  cannot  tell  you  the  beauty  of  it  or  the 
translucent  colour  and  brilliancy.  Does  it  not  bring 
to  mind  the  words  of  Claude  Bragdon,  "This  is 
the  essence  of  art,  first  to  perceive  and  then  to 
publish,  news  from  that  nowhere  of  the  world 
from  which  all  things  flow  and  to  which  all  things 
return  "  ? 

Scriabin  always  has  wings;  sometimes  soaring, 
sometimes  brooding,  but  always  wings.  I  have  no 
wish  in  detailing  the  achievements  of  Scriabin  or 
showing  what  I  consider  to  be  his  processes,  to  in- 
dicate a  musical  program  or  attribute  conscious 
meanings  to  his  music.  That  would  be  both  futile 
and  impertinent.  I  have  endeavoured  only  to  point 
out  the  divergence  between  the  content  of  this 
master's  work  and  the  representational  composers 
on  the  one  hand,  the  emotional  writers  on  the  other. 
Some  one  has  said,  "  As  soon  as  the  biographers  of 
a  creative  artist  learn  that  he  had  the  idea  of  a  union 
between  art  and  religion,  they  look  for  external 
manifestations  of  that  union."  They  either  look  for 
a  sign,  or  find  that  union  itself  a  stumblingblock. 
They  still  seem  to  think  that  the  creative  artist  con- 
sciously makes  works  of  art  according  to  his  beliefs, 
whereas  the  ideal  of  that  union  in  itself  opens  the 
mind  of  the  artist  to  the  inflowing  which  manifests 
as  a  masterpiece.  The  creative  artist  at  his  best  is 
but  an  instrument.  He  sits  still  and  records  what 
comes  to  him.1  That  he  must  be  a  perfect  instru- 
ment goes  without  saying,  and  that  he  must  take  his 

1  See  Cobb,  "  Mysticism  and  the  Creed,"  page  139,  line  25. 


128  THE   RELATION   OF 

position  at  the  center,  where  all  is  still,  is  evidenced 
by  Scriabin's  letter  to  Briantchaninoff,1  published 
in  the  Moscow  Musical  Journal,  Mouzika:  "  I  cannot 
refrain  from  expressing  my  sympathy  with  the 
views  which  you  have  expounded  in  the  Novoye 
Vremo  on  the  subject  of  the  educational  significance 
of  war. 

"You  have  voiced  an  old  idea  of  mine,  that  at 
certain  times  the  masses  urgently  need  to  be  shaken 
up,  in  order  to  purify  the  human  organization  and 
fit  it  for  the  reception  of  more  delicate  vibrations 
than  those  to  which  it  has  hitherto  responded. 

"  The  history  of  races  is  the  expression  at  the 
periphery  of  the  development  of  a  central  idea, 
which  comes  to  the  meditating  prophet  and  is  felt 
by  the  creative  artist,  but  is  completely  hidden  from 
the  masses. 

"  The  development  of  this  idea  is  dependent  upon 
the  rhythm  of  the  individual  attainments,  and  the 
periodic  accumulation  of  creative  energy,  acting  at 
the  periphery,  produces  the  upheavals  whereby  the 
evolutionary  movement  of  races  is  accomplished. 
These  upheavals  (cataclysms,  catastrophes,  wars, 
revolutions,  etc.),  in  shaking  the  souls  of  men,  open 
them  to  the  reception  of  the  idea  hidden  behind  the 
outward  happenings. 

"  The  circle  is  complete,  and  a  stage  of  the  journey 
is  finished :  something  has  been  attained,  the  creative 
idea  has  made  one  more  impression  on  matter.  We 
are  now  living  through  just  such  a  period  of  up- 
heaval, and  in  my  eyes  it  is  an  indication  that  once 

1  I  take  the  liberty  of  reproducing  this  letter  entire  from 
Dr.  Hull's  book  on  Scriabin. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     129 

again  an  idea  has  matured  and  is  eager  to  be  in- 
carnated. 

"And  at  such  a  time  one  wants  to  cry  aloud  to 
all  who  are  capable  of  new  conceptions,  scientists, 
and  artists,  who  have  hitherto  held  aloof  from  the 
common  life,  but  who  in  fact  are  unconsciously 
creating  history.  The  time  has  come  to  summon 
them  to  the  construction  of  new  forms,  and  the 
solution  of  new  synthetic  problems.  These  problems 
are  not  yet  fully  recognized,  but  are  dimly  per- 
ceptible in  the  quest  of  complex  experiences,  in 
tendencies  such  as  those  manifested  by  artists  to 
reunite  arts  which  have  hitherto  been  differentiated, 
to  federate  provinces  heretofore  entirely  foreign  to 
one  another.  The  public  is  particularly  aroused  by 
the  performance  of  productions  which  have  philo- 
sophic ideas  as  a  basis,  and  combine  the  elements  of 
various  arts.  Personally  I  was  distinctly  conscious 
of  this  at  the  fine  rendering  of  Prometheus  at 
the  Queen's  Hall,  London.  As  I  now  reflect  on  the 
meaning  of  the  war,  I  am  inclined  to  attribute  the 
public  enthusiasm,  which  touched  me  so  greatly  at 
the  time,  not  so  much  to  the  musical  side  of  the 
work  as  to  its  combination  of  music  and  mysticism." 

In  this  connection,  and  to  substantiate  in  some 
small  degree  the  sentiment  of  Scriabin  as  expressed 
in  that  letter,  I  cull  from  The  Living  Age  of  March 
20,  1920,  this  trenchant  question  and  answer  from 
an  article  called  "The  Unearthly  Note  in  Modern 
Music":  "And  why  does  the  whole  texture  of 
modern  music,  even  when  it  professes  to  utter  ordi- 
nary human  feelings,  shine  and  shimmer  with  lights 
and  colours  not  of  this  world?  Why  has  so  much  of 


130  THE   RELATION    OF 

it  a  tang  which  belongs  to  no  fruit  ever  gathered 
from  an  earthly  garden  ?  Why  is  so  much  modern 
music  either  diabolian  or  ethereal  ?  .  .  .  The  explana- 
tion has  yet  to  be  found.  Partly  perhaps  our  musi- 
cians obey  the  general  movement  of  the  time  away 
from  the  elementary  materialism  in  science,  art  and 
philosophy  which  satisfied  the  advanced  thinkers 
of  fifty  years  ago."  Tentatively  this  writer  sug- 
gests at  the  end  of  his  article  what  the  modern 
musicians  modestly  claim:  "Or  is  it  that  music  is 
actually  leading  us  to  altogether  new  lines  and  levels 
of  thought?  Are  all  musicians  secretly  determined 
that  music  shall  not  be  distanced  by  the  higher 
mathematics  in  generalizing  the  universe  ?  We  have 
much  the  same  feeling  when  listening  to  Scriabin 
as  when  listening  to  Professor  Eddington.  Per- 
haps, unknown  to  us  of  grosser  perception,  our 
modern  musicians  already  move  in  the  time-space 
which  is  still  an  eerie  habitation  for  persons  of  com- 
mon clay." 

Scriabin's  Opus  60,  the  Fifth  Symphony,  called 
Prometheus,  was,  if  you  remember  from  its  un- 
fortunate presentation  in  New  York  by  the  Russian 
Symphony  Orchestra,  an  experiment  with  sound 
and  colour.  You  will  recall  that  Scriabin  had  a 
scientific  education  in  his  youth,  and  in  the  year 
1900  when  these  experiments  with  sound  and  colour 
were  being  made  in  various  parts  of  the  world, 
Scriabin  was  pursuing  his  own  investigations  along 
this  line.  There  is  a  large  bibliography  on  the  sub- 
ject of  sound  and  colour  in  the  book  by  Dr.  Hull. 
Perhaps  the  reason  for  the  failure  of  the  satisfactory 
union  of  the  two  lies  in  our  present  concept  of  the 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     131 

separateness  of  the  senses.  To  one  living  at  the 
periphery  of  being,  a  dual  sense  impression  would 
produce  what  might  be  called  an  astigmatic  con- 
sciousness at  the  moment.  The  sudden  removal  of 
Scriabin  from  this  sphere  of  action  when  by  force 
of  magic  he  was  about  to  unite  all  five  senses  in  one 
art  ritual,  is  of  peculiar  interest  in  view  of  the  danger 
to  humanity  in  awakening  psychic  power  beyond  its 
spiritual  development. 

The  chord  used  by  Scriabin  harmonically  and 
broken  up  into  melodies  has  been  termed  Nature's 
chord,  because  it  is  made  of  fourths  selected  from 
the  overtones  of  a  given  note,  overtones  hitherto 
disregarded.  His  followers  have  called  it  the  mystic 
chord,  probably  by  reason  of  correspondences  in- 
voked by  the  association  of  tones. 

Some  day  I  hope  I  may  have  definite  lore  to  give 
regarding  the  character  and  potency  of  sound  com- 
binations. My  individual  experiments  have  so  far 
been  too  trifling  to  put  forward  as  a  theoretical  basis. 
Very  interesting  points  do  come  out  sometimes,  how- 
ever—  like  the  experiment  with  Scriabin's  chord 
(see  Hull, page  io6),and  the  tones 
from  which  the  chord  was  derived. 


;That    experiment    made   the    Sun 
the    ruling    factor    in    the    chord, 


u 

:    ff 

and    gave   the    tone 


its  ancient  seat  of  power.1 

Dr.  Hull  has  been  so  very  kind  as  to 

1  "Histoire  de  la  Langue  Musicale,"  by  Maurice  Emmanuel. 

L'Antiquite  pratique  une  echelle  mineur,  dont  on  peut  dire 
qu'elle  est  le  Mineur  absolu,  tres  different  de  notre  mineur 
batard.  Ce  mineur  antique  (mode  de  MI  on  Doristi)  tolere 
autour  de  lui  des  modes  suffragants,  dont  il  est  le  maitre 
inconteste  (page  5). 


132  THE   RELATION    OF 

assure  me  personally  that  Scriabin's  musical  ma- 
terial was  not  a  scale,  but  a  chord.  I  had  found 
a  similarity  between  an  ancient  mode  and  the  series 
of  tones  chosen  by  Scriabin  for  a  given  compo- 
sition. Perhaps  the  ancient  modes  were  made 
after  findings  by  wise  men  in  the  East.  When  a 
chord  is  tall  enough,  if  you  lay  it  down  it  looks 
very  like  a  scale.  And  nowadays  many  a  scale 
has  been  squished  up  into  a  chord.  Are  they  not, 
perhaps,  the  same  animal,  rampant  or  couchant? 

These  compositions  no  longer  sound  cacophanous 
when  one  has  become  familiar  with  the  aural  ma- 
terial involved.  The  harmonic  stuff  taken  as  a  whole 
is  the  thing  to  dwell  upon;  the  harmonic  flow, 
broken  up  into  little  separate,  numbered  chords,  is 
like  the  rhythmic  flow  broken  up  into  little  separate, 
measured  beats.  Scriabin  did  most  of  his  writing  in 
Brussels,  where  he  had  the  association  of  such  minds 
as  Delville,  who  wrote  the  "  Mission  of  Art,"  Mahr- 
hofer,  who  wrote  "The  Psychology  of  Tone-colour," 
Verhaeren,  and  Geveart,  and  was  in  an  earnest 
theosophical  set ;  so  it  is  quite  possible,  indeed  highly 
probable,  that  the  same  method  of  choosing  a  given 
number  of  tones  for  use  out  of  the  twelve  semi- 
tones, according  to  the  location  of  the  planets 
and  the  twelve  signs  of  the  zodiac,  was  employed 
by  both  the  ancient  lawgivers  of  music  and  the 
modern  musical  mystic  who  had  somewhat  of  their 
lore. 

It  is  well  that  some  one  has  broken  through  the 
convention  that  a  musical  house  must  be  built  of 
neat  little  triads  and  locked  up  with  a  tonic  chord 
for  the  night.  It  is  no  more  essential  than  iambic 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC  MUSIC     133 

pentameter  or  a  rhyme  in  alternate  lines.  Indeed 
I  feel  inclined  to  say  of  music  as  Padraic  Colum  has 
said  of  poetry:  "The  new  forms  they  are  creating 
are  likely  to  further  the  production  of  a  distinctive 
poetic  literature  for  America.  These  forms  are 
words  in  a  new  Declaration  of  Independence.  For 
the  future  American  poet  may  be  the  child  of  a 
Syrian  or  a  Swede,  or  a  Greek  or  a  Russian.  The 
traditional  rhythms  of  English  verse  may  not  be 
in  his  blood  and  he  might  fumble  in  his  poetry  if  he 
tried  to  use  them.  But  here  are  verse  measures 
that  he  can  mould  as  he  pleases." 

With  the  limited  material  previously  employed  we 
had  come  to  gauge  every  musician,  creator  and 
virtuoso  alike,  by  the  standard  of  technique.  We 
had  forgotten  a  very  important  fact  which  is  so  well 
spoken  in  a  critique  of  Cufic  writing  in  the  Times 
magazine  of  December  16,  1917,  that  I  cannot  resist 
bringing  it  to  your  attention: 

"It  is  a  habit  of  criticism  to  find  technical  per- 
fection at  the  moment  when  technique  has  lost  its 
relation  to  the  significance  of  its  subject  matter  and 
has  thus  become  a  degraded  and  detached  mechanical 
facility.  Technique  rightly  considered  is  the  result 
of  power  over  means  of  expression,  and  when  that 
power  is  at  its  full,  technique  mounts  to  its  furthest 
heights."  When  the  means  of  expression  is  new, 
"over-spectacled  scholarship,"  to  use  Eastman's 
phrase,  does  not  quite  know  what  to  look  for.  It  is 
as  if  it  had  lost  its  glasses,  and  while  they  are  being 
found  something  happens  in  art.  When,  as  Amy 
Lowell  says  of  our  day,  "  ideas  believed  to  be  funda- 
mental have  disappeared  and  given  place  to  others," 


134  THE   RELATION   OF 

from  internal  evidence  it  seems  safe  to  say  that  in 
these  others  we  have  taken  a  step  forward.  Almost 
without  a  dissenting  voice  the  young  artists  are  pro- 
claiming verities,  —  from  John  Powell,  who  says : 
"  The  artist  must  begin  within  —  in  his  own  soul. 
Life  is  the  principal  thing.  It  is  a  training  of  the 
spirit,"  to  Percy  Grainger's  echo  of  the  same 
thought:  "In  art  there  is  no  escaping  from  one's 
true  inner  nature;  neither  for  beginner  nor  for 
finished  artist."  1  The  Very  Reverend  W.  R.  Inge, 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  might  well  take  heart  from  this 
when  he  thinks  what  outlaws  young  artists  were 
supposed  to  be  in  earlier  days.  He  asseverates  the 
hopelessness  of  reconstruction  save  on  a  spiritual 
basis,  and  says,  "We  need  not  be  afraid  of  what 
is  called  other-worldliness,  for  our  other  world 
is  no  city  in  the  clouds,  but  the  deepest  truth, 
the  fullest  reality,  and  the  ultimate  meaning  of  the 
world  in  which  we  live."  In  music,  then,  let  the 
listener  strive  to  "  cooperate  with  the  magician,"  so 
that  we  may  all  advance  together,  and  not  as  the  wild 
geese  fly,  the  advance  guard  solitary.  We  are  for- 
tunate in  having  at  least  one  English  critic  who  feels 
what  he  hears.  Mr.  Ernest  Newman  gives  us  a 
picture  of  the  Poeme  d'Extase  as  it  was  presented 
in  London  last  Autumn  that  I  must  show  you,  be- 
cause it  is  a  picture  not  of  the  music  but  of  the  thing 
back  of  the  music :  "  I  suppose  we  do  not  quite  get 
out  of  the  music  all  that  Scriabin  put  into  it  unless 
we  have  the  same  mental  picture  of  its  emotional 
sequences  as  he  had.  Unfortunately,  few  if  any  of 

1  "  Modern    Piano "  Mastery,"    2nd    Series,    by    Harriette 
B  rower. 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     135 

us  can  do  this.  We  read  that  the  Symphony  depicts 
'the  ecstasy  of  untrammeled  action,  the  joy  in 
creative  activity,'  and  so  on  and  so  on ;  but  all  this 
helps  us  very  little.  We  have  in  the  last  resort  to 
take  it  in  the  main  as  just  a  piece  of  orchestral  music 
making  itself  as  clear  as  it  can  to  us  in  its  own  way, 
and  taken  thus  it  must  strike  even  the  most  casual 
listener  as  a  masterpiece  among  masterpieces.  It 
not  only  takes  us  into  a  sphere  that  was  previously 
unexplored  territory  for  music,  but  guides  us 
through  it  with  an  uncanny  certainty,  making  us 
almost  forget  the  newness  of  it  all  and  be  conscious 
only  that  here  some  of  the  most  secret  and  mystical 
of  our  dreams  have  become  reality.  This  is  what 
one  cannot  sufficiently  admire  and  wonder  at  — 
Scriabin's  perfect  command  of  an  absolutely  new 
musical  language  for  the  expression  of  moods  so 
personal  that  not  a  hint  of  them  will  be  found  in 
the  music  of  any  other  composer.  It  is  all  new  — 
new  rhythms  that  seem  the  very  soul  of  movement 
set  free  from  moving  limbs;  new  harmonies  of  a 
strange  force  and  sweetness  and  eloquence;  a  new 
colour  that  seems  to  be  compounded  of  the  rarer 
vibrations  of  the  ether;  and  a  new  mental  world,  the 
world  of  a  spirit  that  has  no  need  of  the  concrete 
supports  of  ordinary  thought,  but  weaves  direct 
from  the  essences  behind  the  concrete." 

It  is  surely  due  the  conductor  of  a  performance 
that  could  inspire  such  thoughts  to  repeat  here 
the  measure  of  praise  bestowed  upon  him  by  Mr. 
Newman  in  that  column:  "Mr.  Coates  gave  a 
performance  of  it  that  defies  description.  It  will 
remain  with  me  as  one  of  the  half-dozen  great 


136  THE    RELATION    OF 

orchestral  experiences  of  my  life.  A  more  complete 
absorption  of  an  interpreter  in  a  composer's  style 
it  has  never  been  my  luck  to  witness." 

I  wonder  sometimes  if  Scriabin  is  just  a  clear 
pool  in  which  each  man  sees  himself  reflected.  The 
aesthetic  Mr.  Paul  Rosenfeld  looks  at  Scriabin  as  an 
aesthete.  But  Scriabin  has  not  the  negative  force 
of  the  aesthete.  He  has  the  positive  force  of  the 
mystic;  and  a  "mystic"  is  one  who  "sees."  I  can- 
not agree  with  the  polished  essayist  when  he  says, 
"  To  many  it  will  appear  highly  doubtful  that  the 
music  of  Scriabin,  product  as  it  is  of  an  inordinate, 
a  flowerlike  sensibility,  could  be  acceptable  to  any 
but  an  over-refined  and  over-exquisite  few." 

"An  inordinate,  flowerlike  sensibility"  would 
be  only  the  usual  range  of  sensibilities  made  more 
subtle  or  more  rare.  With  Scriabin  it  was  rather 
vision  than  sensibility.  It  has  not  to  do  with  over- 
refinement  or  the  over-exquisite,  it  seems  to  me; 
there  is  a  hardiness,  a  ruthlessness  even,  in  the 
human  blade  of  grass  that  is  brave  enough  to  pierce 
the  sod  and  face  the  sun. 

If  a  musical  message  be  an  emotional  message, 
it  can  be  caught  by  myriads  who  would  never  under- 
stand it  in  words.  But  let  it  be  a  message  of  human 
import  beyond  the  average  emotional  development, 
and  by  this  I  mean  the  development  of  perceptions 
that  are  not  of  the  intellect,  and  it  will  be  understood 
only  by  those  who  have  attained  a  development 
above  the  average.  Appreciation  of  Scriabin  may 
mark  the  evolution  of  a  nation's  spiritual  receptivity ; 
a  higher  sensibility  if  you  like,  but  turned  toward 
the  Sun.  At  any  rate,  what  better  gauge  would  you 


ULTRAMODERN   TO  ARCHAIC   MUSIC     137 

suggest?    Majolica,  Sevres,  Celadon  —  I  leave  you 
to  find  their  prototypes  in  ultramodern  music. 

As  for  Scriabin,  with  what  exultant  joy  Arch 
Perrin  exclaimed,  "  And  just  think  —  the  vulgar 
never  will  like  him ! " 


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